ATTITUDES TOWARD ANIMALS AMONG NORWEGIAN ADOLESCENTS

Attitudes towards a wide range of animals were measured among a sample of 562 children and adolescents, aged between 9 and 15 years, from on e urban and two rural areas in Southern Norway. The respondents comple ted a questionnaire based on Kellert's (1996) attitude typology toward animals. The results showed that the humanistic attitude type ranked first, followed by the moralistic, ecologistic, naturalistic, negativi stic, dominionistic, and utilitarian attitude types. Gender difference s appeared on the moralistic and negativistic (girls highest), and the naturalistic, dominionistic, and utilitarian (boys highest) sub-scale s. Scores on the ecologistic, naturalistic, and dominionistic sub-scal es decreased with increasing age. Urban respondents had higher moralis tic, and rural respondents had higher dominionistic sub-scale scores. Respondents who owned a pet had higher humanistic, moralistic, and low er utilitarian sub-scale scores than had non-owners.