Although efforts to promote biodiversity in cities around the world have increased, many wild animals (including vertebrates and invertebrates) comprising “urban biodiversity” are unpopular or often regarded as a nuisance by the general public, particularly by those city residents who have had little experience with nature. We conducted a questionnaire survey with 1030 urban residents in Japan to assess their likeability (like and dislike) towards 29 wild animals, and their willingness to have these animals in their neighbourhoods, and examined the effects of childhood experience of nature and socio-demographic factors on these attitudes. In general, people liked smaller birds and mammals, and some insects, but were only willing to have birds and insects near their homes. Females liked birds and mammals but disliked insects and unfavourable animals more than males. Older people expressed willingness to coexist with insects and birds more than younger people. However, childhood experience with nature, particularly collecting insects and plants, was a more important factor than socio-demographics for positive attitudes towards wild animals. Therefore, even though urban residents were unwilling to coexist with many animals, their attitudes can become more positive through increased interaction with wild animals and plants. Biodiversity conservation initiatives in cities should place greater emphasis on providing children with more interaction with biodiversity.

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Visitor mobility is an important element for facilitating sustainable local economics and management in urban tourism destinations. Research on visitor mobility often focuses on the patterns and structures of spatial visitor behavior and the factors that influence them. This study examines the relationship between visitor mobility and urban spatial structures through an exploratory analysis of visitors’ movements and characteristics, which were collected from surveys with global positional system (GPS) tracking technologies and questionnaires. The Ueno district, one of the most popular tourism destinations in Tokyo, Japan, was selected as the study area. For local stakeholders, the low accessibility levels between this district’s park zone and downtown zone have become a major destination management issue. We compared visitor movements and flow networks in various places from different major trip origins (railway stations) by using several analysis techniques (GPS log distribution, spatial movement sequences, and network analysis), and examined physical and human factors that caused the different mobility patterns. The results demonstrated that physical factors, including major transport hubs (railway stations), topography, commercial accumulation, and POI distribution, affected intra-destination visitor behavior, and segmented visitor markets into different main zones. Such findings could inform future destination management policies and planning in local urban tourism destinations.

Urban biodiversity conservation often aims to promote the quality of life for urban residents by providing ecosystem services as well as habitats for diverse wildlife. However, biodiversity inevitably brings some disadvantages, including problems and nuisances caused by wildlife. Although some studies have reported that enhancement of nature interaction among urban children promotes their affective attitude toward of favorable animals, its effect on tolerance toward problem-causing wildlife is unknown. In this study, we assessed the tolerance of 1,030 urban residents in Japan toward hornets and wild boar, and analyzed the effects of childhood experience with nature on tolerance using a structural equation model. The model used sociodemographic factors and childhood nature experience as explanatory variables, affective attitude toward these animals as a mediator, and tolerance as a response variable. The public tolerance toward hornets and boars was low; over 60% of the respondents would request the removal of hornets and wild boar from nearby green spaces by government services, even when the animals had not caused any damage. Tolerance was lower in females and elderly respondents. Childhood experience with nature had a greater influence on tolerance than did sociodemographic factors in the scenario where animals have not caused any problems; however, its effect was only indirect via promoting positive affective attitude toward wildlife when the animals have caused problems. Our results suggest that increasing people’s direct experience with nature is important to raise public tolerance, but its effect is limited to cases where wildlife does not cause any problems. To obtain wider support for conservation in urban areas, conservationists, working together with municipal officials, educators and the media, should provide relevant information on the ecological functions performed by problem-causing wildlife and strategies for avoiding the problems that wildlife can cause.