Evaluating cognitive and behavioral measures of tolerance for wildlife in an invasive species context: a study of Alabama hunters' tolerance for wild pigs

Human tolerance for wildlife is a key consideration for managers and has been measured with attitudes, normative beliefs, and behaviors. The study objectives were to determine, in the context of Alabama hunters' tolerance for non-native, invasive wild pigs, 1) the convergent validity among three cognitive measures of tolerance, and 2) the strength of association between the cognitive measures of tolerance and behavioral measures of tolerance. Results revealed that general attitudes and wildlife acceptance capacity had high convergent validity suggesting that both quantify similar and highly related psychological aspects of tolerance. Conversely, the standard cognitive measures had low predictive associations with most behavioral measures suggesting a lack of interchangeability of behavioral and cognitive measures for purposes of operationalizing tolerance. We highlight how our findings are affected by the complexity of hunter-wild pig interactions and emphasize the importance of assessing tolerance in different contexts to provide greater conceptual clarity.