Abstract Attitudes and emotions shape how humans perceive and behave towards wildlife, making them a key component affecting human–wildlife coexistence. In addition to direct experience with wildlife, research shows that sociodemographic characteristics and locality can influence a person's relationship with wildlife through cultural norms, economic factors and general experiences with nature. We focussed on the interaction between humans and coyotes, a widespread North American urban mammal that has had a particularly divisive history of interactions with humans. We used data from an online survey distributed to residents of Cook County (CC), Illinois and Los Angeles County (LAC), California, to evaluate the relationship between county of residence, sociodemographics, outdoor activity participation, direct experience with coyotes and attitudes and fear towards coyotes. Our results indicated that respondents who identified as female, respondents with low incomes, respondents who identify as Asian, Pacific Islander, or Black, and respondents from CC tended to have less positive attitudes and greater fear towards coyotes than male respondents, respondents with high incomes, White respondents, and respondents from LAC. Some groups' perceptions of coyotes were partly explained by their lower participation in outdoor activities (i.e. respondents with low incomes, Asian and Pacific Islander respondents, respondents from CC) and/or their less frequent sightings of coyotes (i.e. female respondents, low‐income respondents, Asian and Pacific Islander respondents). Our study suggests that in addition to direct experiences, or in their absence, societal structures based on class, race and gender influence how people interact with and perceive wildlife. This adds to a growing literature underscoring the significance of understanding how systems of oppression shape human–wildlife interactions and experiences, emphasizing the need to incorporate an environmental justice lens to human‐wildlife coexistence. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog.
Zepeda et al. (2026) studied this question.