Introduction: Human-companion animal relationships (HARs) strongly influence owners’ perceptions and risk-taking actions during disaster events. And although originating in human-attachment models, research into these relationships and natural disasters often adopts a unidimensional perspective, disregarding the diverse relational characteristics, and associated risk-propensity differences present in disaster contexts. To address the issue, this paper describes multidimensional archetyping of HARs to estimate owners' propensity towards risk taking aimed at protecting their companion animals during a disaster.
Methodology: Australian companion-animal owners living in disaster susceptible areas (n = 437, Mage = 29.76, SD = 14.63, 72.5% female) reported human-animal relational, personality, and attitudinal characteristics via an online survey to reveal differences in HARs and endorsement of acting to secure their animal’s safety whilst risking potential harm in a hypothetical bushfire disaster dilemma. A novel risk-propensity measure of potential intensity and perceived efficacy of pet-directed risk taking, and a bushfire ‘dilemma vignette,’ (breaching a police blockage to access the animal) were used for this purpose (Trigg et al., 2017).
Main results: Two-step clustering and MANOVA (SPSS) identified five archetypal profiles differing in relational, personality, attitude, and risk-propensity characteristics, as well as in endorsement of risking personal safety for the wellbeing of their companion animal (F(36, 1708) = 26.643, p < .001, Pillai’s trace = 1.438). Archetypes were labelled integrated-reliant, integrated-possessive, individuated-independent, individuated-contained, and insular-cautious. Archetype membership varied in strength as a predictor of potential intensity (βs = -.12, p = .020, to .47, p < .001), perceived efficacy (βs = .15, p = .010, to .33, p < .001), and endorsement of pet-directed risk-taking (βs = -.11, p = .049, to .34, p < .001) regarding bushfire threat. Further research should extend archetyping to the analysis of recorded risk-taking, various HARs, and different disaster types.
Principal conclusions and implications for field: Findings indicate that relational, personality, and attitude differences in HARs are associated with variability in owners’ risk propensity and risk endorsement for protecting companion animals during disaster. Archetyping is potentially applicable to various human-animal interaction issues, and has clear safety and welfare implications for engaging pet owners about disaster survival.