Understanding human pet relationships in urban india

Abstract

Background: A steady increase in keeping pets is a reality in urban spaces and this newlinephenomenon exploded during the COVID19 pandemic, which has brought both an newlineenhancement in wellbeing for the human, and also an increasing abandonment of animals. Among pet owners, a smaller population of individuals tend to view the pet as a child. Pet parents invest in direct and indirect care of companion animals in ways that mirror human care of biological offspring. This has been widespread in the west, but it showing increasing presence in Indian urban spaces. Hence, this study aims to explore the dynamics of the Indian pet owner s relationship with their pet and understand pet parenting, using Bowlby s Attachment Theory framework. Method: A sequential mixed method approach was used. In Stage 1, a survey was created to obtain the attitudes and behaviors of pet owners, and attachment and empathy using the Lexington Attachment to Pet Scale and Pet Attachment Questionnaire and Animal Empathy Scale. Content analysis was conducted on 3 open ended questions exploring the motivation and preparation and experience of pet keeping. The attitudes and behavior questionnaire from 538 respondents was subjected to EFA and CFA to define the factors that model the Indian pet owner s newlinerelationship with the pet. The emerging factors were tested for association with newlinemeasures of attachment and empathy. In stage 2 an in-depth interview was conducted on a subset of 20 individuals from stage 1 to understand the meaning making of being a pet parent and the dynamics of interspecies family. Braun and Clark s reflexive thematic analysis method was used to identify themes that explain the meaning making process of pet parents and the role of pets in the same. newlineResults: Although the range of species that are considered as pets is quite vast, in an newlineurban setting the prevalence of such cases in our sample was too small to conduct newlinereliable analysis.