Street dogs are a common sight on the streets of Tbilisi. How do people’s attitudes towards them vary by age, gender, and whether or not someone lives in the center or outskirts of the city? Results of a November 2017 phone survey CRRC-Georgia carried out for a British charity Mayhew provide some answers to these questions.
Forty per cent of Tbilisi’s population reported positive attitudes towards street dogs, 39% neutral, and 20% negative. Women and men and people in central and non-central neighborhoods of Tbilisi report positive and negative attitudes at similar rates. People over the age of 56 report negative attitudes slightly more often than people under this age.
Why do the 20% of the population who report negative attitudes not like street dogs? Their majority (67%, although margins of error are higher for this relatively smaller subgroup) report a “general fear of dogs” as the main reason. The data suggests that women fear dogs more than men, which is not a finding unique to Tbilisi. Research from other contexts (e.g. see here and here) also indicates that women in general are more likely to report fearing dogs than men.
To explore the data in this blog post, visit our Online Data Analysis portal.
