Audience segmentation of New Zealand cat owners: Understanding the barriers and drivers of cat containment behavior

by Sarah A. E. Chamberlain, Lynette J. McLeod, Donald W. Hine

Free-roaming companion cats have a detrimental impact on the environment and are at risk of harm. Despite these negative impacts, it is the norm in New Zealand (NZ) to allow companion cats to roam freely and only a minority of cat owners practice cat containment. This study firstly sought to identify what factors act as barriers and drivers of NZ owners’ participation in cat containment, and secondly whether NZ owners could be segmented into unique audiences based on the factors predicting their cat containment behavior. It was hypothesized that cat owners with greater capability, opportunity, and motivation to perform cat containment would have greater cat containment intentions and behavior. Furthermore, it was expected that at least three segments of cat owners would exist in NZ which differed significantly in the set of capability, opportunity and motivational factors predicting their cat containment behavior. A quantitative online cross-sectional survey of 395 NZ cat owners was conducted, measuring containment intentions and behavior, and capability, opportunity, and motivation to perform cat containment. Results from bivariate correlations and multiple regression demonstrated that capability, opportunity, and motivational factors predicted increased cat containment intentions and behavior. Latent profile analysis identified four distinct segments of cat owners with unique COM profiles; engaged (6%), receptive (17%), ambivalent (48%), and opposed (30%). Validation analysis demonstrated that these groups all differed significantly in their cat containment intentions and behaviors. From these findings theoretically grounded behavior change interventions can be developed to target the causes of non-participation in cat containment for each of the identified cat owner segments, thereby improving the management of free-roaming cats in NZ.