Urban rats are the ‘fall-guy’: Resident motivations for municipal rat complaints

Michael Joseph Lee; Kaylee A Byers; Xiaocong Guo; Lisa K F Lee; Susan M Cox; Chelsea G Himsworth

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0296920

. 2024 Feb 8;19(2):e0296920. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296920

Urban rats are the ‘fall-guy’: Resident motivations for municipal rat complaints

Michael Joseph Lee ^1,^2,^*, Kaylee A Byers ^1,³, Xiaocong Guo ^1,², Lisa K F Lee ^1,⁴, Susan M Cox ^2,⁵, Chelsea G Himsworth ^1,^2,⁶

Editor: Muhammad Khalid Bashir⁷

PMCID: PMC10852225 PMID: 38329952

Abstract

Rats are an important issue in cities globally. Despite their ubiquity, perceptions and concerns about rats vary with circumstance and the context in which a person interacts with them. Municipal rat management programs are a service to communities and therefore must be responsive to the varied concerns of their residents. Understanding why communities are concerned about rats can help inform rat management programs to meet the specific needs of their residents. The objective of this study was to identify why the residents of Vancouver, Canada care about rats and what they want done to address them. To do this, we qualitatively analyzed 6,158 resident complaints about rats made to the city’s municipal government between January 2014 and May 2020. Using a qualitative descriptive coding process, we found that rats were a priority in a minority of cases. In general, people were more concerned about broader community issues, such as neighborhood disorder, of which rats were one part. Complaints tended to be made when problems were highly visible, nearby, and when the complainant wanted the city to take action to alleviate this issue, particularly when they were in and around their living spaces. The rates of complaints were highest in the most economically and socially deprived neighborhoods and lowest in the most privileged neighbourhoods. We synthesize this information with a view towards understanding how to develop objectives and actions for municipal management strategies that are grounded in community concerns.

1. Introduction

Rats, in the genus Rattus, are present in cities around the world where they have important public health and economic impacts. These animals can carry many pathogens transmissible to humans [1], they increase the levels of indoor allergens associated with heightened asthma morbidity [2,3], and they negatively impact people’s mental health by causing stress and anxiety [4,5]. Rats can also cause economic strain, by damaging and degrading roads, wires, buildings, other urban infrastructure [6] and by destroying personal belongings and food products [7,8]. Furthermore, they can directly impact local businesses through the costs associated with rodent control, and their presence leads to business closures and damaged reputations [9].

Despite these widespread impacts, people’s perceptions of and concerns about rats may vary geographically. For example, residents of Niamey, Niger reported being most concerned about rats damaging their food stocks, homes, and other personal belongings [8]. In comparison, residents in Chicago, USA recounted apprehension related to personal safety and disease spread [5], while interviewees living in an impoverished neighborhood in Vancouver, Canada reported that rats disrupted sleep and elicited feelings of anxiety [10]. Peoples’ concerns related to rats may vary because they are entwined with a variety of municipal issues. For instance, in the Canadian study, rats were symbolic of social neglect and disregard for neighborhoods [10]. To interviewees, rats were interconnected with other issues affecting their neighbourhoods including homelessness and the ongoing opioid crisis [11]. The interviewees prioritized these other issues above rat management. While there are few studies on human perceptions of rats, they collectively suggest that the perceived priority of rat problems is likely to vary across space, time, and with other factors such as socio-demographic characteristics.

Understanding why people are concerned about rats is important for the development of effective rat management strategies. This is because municipal rat management programs are designed to be a service to their communities and therefore they must be responsive to resident concerns to effectively meet their needs [12,13]. However, there is limited published information available on the specific reasons that urban residents care about rats and where, when, and what they want municipal governments to do about them. In addition, it is important to define these perceptions locally because residents’ needs regarding rats are likely to vary between different cities and over time.

The objective of this study was to examine and describe rat complaints made by residents of Vancouver, Canada to the municipal government. To do this, we qualitatively analyzed resident complaints about rats made to the city’s municipal government and assessed their spatial distribution. Specifically, we sought to: 1) infer whether rats were the primary reason a resident complained to the city or whether they were secondary to another issue; 2) describe the concerns that residents cited as their reason for complaining about rats; 3) identify the actions that residents requested of the city to address the issue; and 4) assess whether rat complaints were associated with neighborhood deprivation. We synthesize this information with a view towards understanding how to develop objectives and actions for municipal rat management strategies that are grounded in community concerns.

2. Material and methods

2.1 Municipal rat complaints data

Data analyzed in this study consisted of complaints about rats made to the municipal government of the City of Vancouver. Complaints were made by residents via the online VanConnect platform or via the 311-phone line [14]. Online submissions were written by the complainant. Phone calls were summarized by a phone operator. Each complaint included: (1) a complaint written by the phone operator or by the complainant; (2), the forward sortation area location or FSA (i.e., the first 3 digits of the 6-digit zip code) of the complaint; (3) the date of the complaint, and; (4) the date the case was closed by the City. The data was pre-categorized by the City of Vancouver into 29 categories (S1 Table) based on their content (i.e., property use complaint, citizen feedback case, dead animal pick-up, etc.).

Between January 2014 and May 2020, the city of Vancouver received 6,158 complaints that included the keywords “rat”, “rats”, “rodent”, and “rodents”. Data were accessed by study authors on 20 May 2020. No identifying information was provided. Entries were initially excluded if they were either about mice or were otherwise unrelated to rats, such as those regarding the ‘rat race’ (n = 604). Entries were also removed if they were pet rat-related or were requests for a dead animal pick-up (n = 1,269). Dead animal pickups involved cases where a complainant requested that the city remove a dead rat but contained no additional information. The final dataset consisted of 4,285 complaints. This study was approved by the University of British Columbia’s human research ethics board (H19-02715).

2.2 Deprivation data

To examine the association between the number of complaints and neighborhood socio-economic status, we downloaded the Material and Social Deprivation Indices (MSDI). The MSDI, developed by the Institut National de Santé Publique du Québec [15], was created from six indicators in the 2016 Canadian census and the 2011 National Household Survey. The MSDI is comprised of two indices: (1) the material deprivation index, a measure of access to material resources and was developed using indicators such as employment status, income, and education and (2) the social deprivation index, a measure of the strength of social networks and was developed using indicators such as the number of single parent families, the proportion of people living alone, and martial status. In this study, we created a combined index of material and social deprivation using the first strategy recommended in the MSDI user guide [16]. The combined index has five categories including: (1) materially and socially privileged; (2) average material and social deprivation; (3) materially privileged but socially deprived; (4) materially deprived but socially privileged; and (5) materially and socially deprived. We linked complaints to neighborhood deprivation by the FSA and graphically examined whether the rate of complaints was associated with deprivation.

2.3 Qualitative data analysis

The overarching goal of this analysis was to understand why Vancouver residents were concerned about rats and what actions they wanted taken as a result of their complaint. To achieve this goal, we applied a method called qualitative description [17] in which we focused on describing and summarising the content of the textual complaints data using a qualitative coding process. Overall, this coding process (Table 1) involved defining categories (i.e., themes) to describe the content of the complaints, assigning each complaint to those categories, and then summarising the content of the complaints in each category. ‘Qualitative codes’ refer to the words or phrases used to label each category.

Table 1. Details of the data analysis.

Step	Description
1) Initial concept map and coding	a. Four coders (MJL, KAB, LL, XG) were each assigned a random selection of 5% of the data^* b. Four coders independently developed: i. Visual concept maps to describe the content of their subset ii. Qualitative codes describing the content of the calls related to why the complainant was concerned about rats and what they wanted to occur because of their complaintc. Coders compared and contrasted maps and codesd. Coders collaboratively built a single concept map and set of codes for the entire 20% random selection of data
2) Coder calibration	a. The four coders independently mapped and coded the same 50 complaints b. Compared maps and codes c. Discussed discrepancies and emergent information d. Came to a consensus on each discrepancy before proceeding
3) Coding and concept mapping	a. Each of the four coders was randomly assigned 25% of the overall dataset b. Each coder independently: i. Qualitatively coded their subset of the data • Categorized each complaint by the co-developed qualitative codes • The initial set of codes was not changed throughout the coding process to facilitate consistency among coders and enumeration across the entire dataset ii. Refined the initial collaborative concept map to account for new information not captured by the qualitative codes developed in step 1 • Individual concept maps were built through the addition of new concepts, restructuring, and reorganization as new information emerged from their respective datasets • Memoing was used to track reasoning behind changes • Maps were continually updated until no new call triggered the addition of new information to the map and the content of every call could be categorized within the framework
4) Collaborative concept mapping	a. Coders compared and contrasted concept maps b. Discussed and agreed upon discrepancies in maps c. Organized concepts into higher level themes d. Collaboratively built a visual thematic framework to describe the content of the overall dataset
5) Coding summaries	a. Descriptive statistics were used to assess the proportion of each code in the overall dataset b. Summaries were written for each code and are described in the Results section

Open in a new tab

^*All random selection occurred within categories of complaints predefined by the city. The city categorized calls into 29 categories (i.e., property use complaint, fire safety hazard, etc), such that for step 1 in this table, 5% of the codes were randomly selected from each of these 29 categories to give each coder 5% of the overall number of complaints.

To begin this qualitative coding process (Table 1), we derived a preliminary group of descriptive qualitative codes based on 20% of all complaints. To do this, four coders were each randomly assigned 5% of all complaints, stratified by the 29 categories predefined by the City of Vancouver. Each coder independently developed a visual map of qualitative concepts [18] that described why the complainant cared about rats (e.g., rats were spreading garbage) and what they wanted to occur because of their complaint (e.g., rat extermination). This concept map was then used to develop a list of qualitative codes (i.e., ‘garbage’ and ‘extermination’) to categorize the content of the complaints. For example, if a complainant was calling to report that rats were spreading garbage in alleyways and was requesting that the city exterminate the rats, the call was coded as: ‘resident concern about rats: spreading garbage’ and ‘action requested: extermination’. Coders collaboratively built a single set of qualitative codes to be applied across all complaints (Fig 1).

For the main analysis, each coder was randomly assigned a non-overlapping 25% of the entire dataset to which they applied a two-step coding framework. First, each coder systematically categorized each complaint by the initial set of qualitative codes (Fig 1). Second, to capture new or emergent information that was not accounted for by the initial set of qualitative codes, each coder independently defined new codes as they encountered content that was not encompassed by the initial set of qualitative codes.

Finally, we tallied the total number of complaints that were categorized into each code in the initial qualitative coding framework (Fig 1). We did not enumerate emergent codes that were defined to capture new information that arose during the coding process because this was done independently by each coder. Instead we present this information descriptively to provide additional context to the results.

3. Results

3.1 General description of complaint content

Complaints ranged from between one to twenty sentences in length and varied in detail. The most detailed complaints included information about why the individual was concerned about rats (e.g., health concerns), where the problem was (e.g., alleys), what other issues were associated with rats (e.g., waste), who they viewed as responsible for the problem (e.g., neighbours), how they wanted the city to address the issue (e.g., pest control services), as well as details about how the situation made them feel and whether or not they had complained about this issue previously. The least detailed complaints provided only a few words (‘messy yard attracting rats’). As a result, some complaints were coded with all codes (i.e., reason for calling, action requested, property type, etc.) while others were only coded with one (i.e., action requested). When a particular code was not a part of the complaint, that complaint was not categorized for that code. Because of this, percentages are reported relative to the total number of complaints (n = 4,285) and percentages do not add up to 100% in each category.

3.2 Why were people complaining about rats?

Rats were the primary reason for the complaint in one third (1283 of 4286 complaints: 29.9%) of complaints (Fig 2A). In these instances, residents were concerned about: (1) rats damaging their property (e.g., chewing on car wires, damaging commercial goods); (2) health risks (e.g., diseases, asthma, breathing problems); (3) vulnerability of elderly people (e.g., parents were elderly and unable to address the issue themselves); (4) vulnerability of children (e.g., rats near playground/daycare); (5) the smells and sounds associated with rats (e.g., scratching in the wall); (6) impacts on sleep quality; and (7) rodenticide application, which was primarily considered a rat-associated health risk.

When rats were the primary concern, they were described as problematic in relation to their proximity, the potential for infestation of personal property, a neighbourhood infestation, and in response to coverage of rats seen in the media. First, individuals were most concerned about rats when they were currently in or near their personal property (proximity). For example, people were concerned when rats were inside their home or building, in their yard, or in a neighbor’s yard. Second, people were concerned when rats had the potential to infest their property (potential infestation). For instance, callers reported poorly maintained city-owned vegetation near their homes because they felt it might provide rats with a route into their building via branches overhanging the roof. Third, callers expressed concern when there were new rat sightings in a neighbourhood, a visible infestation in the neighbourhood that was perceived to be growing, or rats appeared to be moving into the neighbourhood from surrounding areas (e.g., community gardens or nearby properties (neighbourhood infestation). Finally, individuals complained about rats in response to hearing about them in the news (media coverage). In these cases, complainants had a heightened awareness of rats because of the news, or they disagreed with the report because they felt that the city did not have a rat problem.

The majority of complaints (3002 of 4285 complaints: 70.5%) identified rats as a secondary issue. In these instances, callers discussed rats as one symptom of another broader community issue that they were primarily concerned with, such as waste management and vacant houses. Where rats were the secondary concern, they were often presented as a part of the justification for why the primary issue they reported required immediate attention. For example, numerous complainants were upset with how neighbors were not managing their waste/garbage. The complainant would describe how neighbours’ waste was either attracting rats or providing a place for rats to thrive.

Overall, 83.9% of complaints (3595 of 4285 complaints) described broader community issues that were perceived to be associated with rats while the other 16.1% of complaints did not specify a concern other than rats (Fig 2A). The framing of these broader community issues differed depending on whether an individual was reporting rats as a primary or secondary issue. Where rats were the primary concern, complainants cited these community issues as causing or contributing to a rat infestation. Where rats were the secondary concern, complainants considered these issues important in and of themselves, but with potential to promote rats. For example, many complainants reported neighbourhood garbage or compost issues that were unsightly, unsanitary, smelly, and which, if left unmanaged, might attract rats.

The most common issue associated with rats was garbage (2163 of 4285 complaints: 50.5%). These included reports of abandoned garbage, overflowing receptacles, incorrect garbage storage (e.g., in bags, dumpster left open or unlocked), broken trash bins, poor trash bin maintenance (e.g., dumpsters left unplugged), delayed or missed garbage pickup, and junk/debris/waste in yards or alleyways. Although these issues were often viewed as causes of infestations, people also felt that rats perpetuated and worsened these problems by getting into garbage and spreading it throughout the neighbourhood.

The second most common issue associated with rats was overgrowth of vegetation (550 of 4285 complaints: 12.8%). These complaints were generally about poorly maintained vegetation in a nearby yard or in the greenspaces between a building/home and the road or sidewalk. For complainants who were primarily concerned about rats, overgrowth was seen as harbourage for rats. For complainants secondarily concerned about rats, the overgrowth was described as unsightly and undesirable in the neighbourhood. Overgrowth and waste issues were often co-reported as an issue of overall property maintenance. For example, individuals reported neighbours who neglected yard maintenance, allowing for overgrowth and the accumulation of junk, debris, and fruit from unharvested trees on the ground.

The third most reported issue was compost (374 of 4285 complaints: 8.7%). Similar concerns regarding garbage were also applied to compost (i.e., overflowing, poorly maintained, or broken compost bins). For those who were primarily concerned about rats, compost was described as a major food source for rats because: (1) rats were able to chew through the residential compost bins; (2) compost haulers dropped compost along the alleyways; (3) haulers damaged compost bins allowing for access by rats; and (4) some people did not store compost in closed containers. These complainants reported an intense dislike and/or disgust of composting in general. Rats were one of many groups of pests seen to be attracted by compost, including coyotes, bugs, birds, and raccoons.

Less commonly reported issues associated with rats included feeding wildlife (147 of 4285 complaints: 3.4%), rat burrows (123 of 4285 complaints: 2.9%), homelessness (97 of 4285 complaints: 2.3%), and hoarding (88 of 4285 complaints: 1%).

3.3 Locations of complaints

3.3.1 Geographical distribution and deprivation

In the study area there are 29 FSAs and the mean number of complaints per FSA (range) was 6.8 (0.6–14.7) per 1,000 population (Fig 3A). In general, the rate of complaints increased with increasing material and social deprivation (Fig 3A). However, this association was primarily driven by the most privileged and the most deprived FSAs, which contained the lowest and highest complaint rates, respectively. FSAs with intermediate levels of deprivation had a greater range of complaints (Fig 3B).

3.3.2 Location related to complaint content

Complaints were made in relation to several community locations. The most common areas were: (1) alleyways, sidewalks, and streets (1070 of 4285 complaints: 25%); (2) residential homes and properties (701 of 4285 complaints: 16.4%); (3) residential rental homes and properties (513 of 4285 complaints: 12%); and (4) abandoned or vacant properties (438 of 4285 complaints: 10.2%; Fig 2B). Complaints were often coded with multiple overlapping locations (e.g., “alleyways, sidewalks, and streets” in a “residential” area).

In most instances, complainants reported issues that were near their residence. For instance, people complained about alleyways and sidewalks near their home or that they visited frequently. Similarly, reports regarding residential and rental properties were typically made about properties they lived in, near, or frequently passed.

Some individuals used property types to justify why they were directing their complaint to the municipal government. For example, many complaints were made about garbage issues in neighbors’ backyards. Some of these complaints justified the need to report because the garbage and associated rat issue was spilling over into city-owned property such as the alleyway–thus requiring city involvement. Others reported that the problem originated outside of their property or was on such a large scale that the municipal government was the only group with jurisdiction to manage it. Complainants also described rat problems originating on a single property as the source of issues for the whole neighborhood.

3.4 Actions requested

Most complaints (2982 of 4285 complaints: 69.6%) did not directly request a specific action. These complaints simply reported a rat issue or associated problem. For example, many complaints reported the presence of rats, garbage, and/or overgrowth in an area. It was not clear whether the complainant wanted the reported issue fixed by the city or whether they wanted to alert the municipality.

For those complaints that did include a request for action (Fig 2C), actions requested included: (1) picking up garbage (262 of 4285 complaints: 6.1%); (2) forcing residents to fix a problem (254 of 4285 complaints: 5.9%) such as clearing their yard of clutter; (3) improving existing garbage services (194 of 4285 complaints: 4.5%) including increasing the number of trash pickups, supplying better garbage bins, and changing the hauling company; (4) seeking information (131 of 4285 complaints: 3.1%) about issues like how long landlords have to eliminate pests from a rental unit; (5) initiating a new service (111 of 4285 complaints: 2.6%), such as starting a public awareness program to educate transient residents (i.e., students, recent arrivals) about existing garbage programs; (6) requesting vegetation service (89 of 4285 complaints: 2.1%) most commonly cutting back overgrown vegetation and tree branches, and; (7) improving those vegetation services (7 of 4285 complaints: 0.2%). The categories ‘other requests’ (222 of 4285 complaints: 5.2%) and ‘improving other services’ (29 of 4285 complaints: 0.7%) included banning rodenticides and improving services that hold landlords accountable for the state of their rental properties. Complaints in these categories were comprised of requests that were not present in the random 20% of data the coders used to define the original coding framework for enumeration. Therefore, the content of these requests were not further categorized and were not counted because they arose after the qualitative coding framework was established. None of the four coders noted that requests to exterminate rats were significant enough of a concern to warrant its own distinct emergent theme.

When complainants requested actions, they suggested that either the city should be directly responsible for carrying out the action, or that they should enforce compliance or encourage a behaviour change by the offending individual. Actions that they felt the city should be responsible for included cleaning up alleyways, increasing the number of trash pickups, and maintaining vegetation on public property such as sidewalks. In comparison, many felt that the city should force compliance when there were issues regarding residential or rental properties. For example, complainants generally requested that the city force their neighbors or landlord to address existing rat problems and/or their associated causes including property maintenance issues, messy yards, and building deterioration/disrepair.

4. Discussion

In this study, we reviewed thousands of complaints made to the City of Vancouver to understand why and where people cared about rats and what they wanted the municipal government to do about them. Overall, we found that rats were a priority in a minority of cases. People were more concerned about broader community issues of which rats were one part. In general, complaints were made when problems were highly visible, nearby, and in and around living spaces. Complaints occurred across the entire city, but they were slightly higher rates in the most deprived neighborhoods, and they reflected residents’ desire for the city to intervene to remediate specific problems related to rats.

4.1 Why did people complain about rats?

Rats were the primary reason for complaining when the perceived hazard was high. Complainants perceived this hazard to be highest when rats were a visible threat to the health, belongings, or property of themselves or their loved ones. The hazard of rats was considered to be especially important when rats were in or near complainants’ residences or other locations where they spent time. However, complaints in which rats were the primary concern comprised a minority of cases. Instead, rats were viewed as symbolic of broader community issues that required action. In these complaints, rats were seen as only one symptom of a broader community problem and they were often used as a justification for why that broader problem was important. This is comparable to findings in London, UK where residents reported that while they found the presence of dog feces disgusting, they saw it as representative of wider neighborhood neglect by other residents and local authorities [20]. Although dog feces was a significant issue, the interviewees felt that the more important problem was the fact that people didn’t care about the state of their neighbourhood, one of the results of which was that people didn’t clean up after their dogs.

Similarly, there is a growing body of evidence indicating that rats impact people within a variety of broader and intertwined community problems [10,12,21,22]. For example, German and Lakin [21] reported that rats were an indicator of environmental justice issues like neighborhood disorder and increased symptoms of depression. Likewise, interviewees in Byers et al. [10] felt that rats were a product of the disregard for their communities by the government which led to greater neighborhood deterioration. In the complaints reviewed in this study, people were primarily concerned about analogous issues linked to neighbourhood disorder, neglect, and deterioration such as garbage, waste, and compost problems, disregard for property maintenance, and overgrown vegetation. This often manifested as neighbors or landlords who did not maintain their properties and allowed them to become overgrown, cluttered, and dilapidated. In other circumstances, these neighborhood problems were seen to be caused by inefficient municipal services, ineffective trash pickup, or by people who were unhoused. Rats are connected to these broader community issues because they are able to thrive in places where such disorder provides a surplus of food, water, and harborage [23]. As such, although most people were primarily complaining about these broader community issues, they reported rats as one important symptom of the larger issue.

4.2 Rat-reduction objectives do not address residents’ concerns

This study demonstrates that the common objective of current municipal rat management strategies to reduce rat populations at as large a scale as possible [12,24,25] is unlikely to address residents’ actual concerns regarding rats. First, people only cared primarily about rats in specific instances where their hazard was perceived to be high, a fact which generalized rat reduction programs does not account for. For example, the predominant aim of these programs is to reduce rats in as many outdoor spaces as possible [22,26,27]. In contrast, this study found that rats were more likely to be a primary concern when they were in or around someone’s living space, areas that may be the least likely to be addressed by these municipal programs [12,13]. This indicates that municipal rat management strategies would better serve their communities by targeting rat control efforts to specific instances in which the hazards posed by rats are perceived to be highest, including in and around places where people live. However, these hazards may be different in different cities and may change over time, such that ongoing consultation with residents may be required.

Second, rat management programs designed primarily with rat reduction objectives fail to address the wider community problems that residents were concerned about in this study. For example, most complainants were concerned with garbage problems, landlord neglect, neighborhood deterioration, and overgrown yards. This is important because municipal rat management programs have largely focused on extermination and have only addressed these wider community problems causing rats when they have surplus resources [12,13,24,28,29]. This prioritization of interventions, with rat extermination first and broader community issues second, is in the opposite direction of resident priorities.

Taken together, this suggests that municipal programs might better serve residents if designed with these broader community problems as the primary focus and with rat reduction in targeted cases. Not only would this more directly address the actual concerns of residents, but it would more effectively reduce rat problems by decreasing available sources of food, water, and harborage [23,28,30]. For instance, complaints were often made about neighbors who had messy, smelly, and overgrown yards that were also attracting rats. In this case, sending a pest management professional to kill the rats would not address the complainant’s primary concern. Further, because of rats’ ability to move around cities, avoid lethal control measures, and their high birth rates, failing to address the unkempt and overgrown property would allow the rat population to quickly rebound [31,32]. Instead, seeking to address the messy yard and the reasons for its persistence would not only address the most important concern of the complainant, but it would also minimize the rat problem by removing their sources of food, water, and harborage. Targeted rat control efforts would still be important in those minority of cases where rats were residents’ primary concern, because they were, for example, in their home.

Addressing residents’ concerns about broader community issues would have many other co-benefits for residents beyond simply reducing rat populations. A randomized control trial in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania found that cleaning up vacant lots (i.e., removing garbage, grating soils, planting new vegetation, fencing the perimeter), and regularly maintaining them, resulted in those living nearby reporting lower levels of depressive symptoms and better overall mental health compared to people living near vacant lots that received no intervention [33]. Initiatives like this, designed to give people a cleaner and healthier community, would have a variety of such co-benefits and would also reduce the size of the rat population.

4.3 Locations of complaints

The highest and lowest rates of complaints were observed in areas with the highest and lowest levels of neighborhood deprivation, respectively, consistent with previous literature [34,35]. This is unsurprising because the most deprived areas often have higher levels of food, water, and harborage which allow rats to thrive [23,36,37]. However, rat complaints arose in areas with all levels of deprivation, indicating that rats were problematic in all areas of the city. The finding that the rate of complaints was the lowest and highest in the most privileged and deprived neighborhoods, respectively, may also reflect the ability of residents living in these areas to address problems on their own. People living in the most deprived areas may have the least resources to address problems on their own (e.g., pay for pest control services) and may therefore be more likely to rely on city services to address rat problems.

Within these neighborhoods, the number of complaints about owned and rented residential properties were greater than the number of complaints about streets, sidewalks, and alleyways. This is important because many municipal rat management programs have aimed to reduce rats outside in shared spaces like alleyways and streets, with less resources towards addressing issues on private properties including inside and around peoples’ living spaces [12]. Further, residents who complained about rats on streets, sidewalks, and alleyways were more concerned with broader community issues, while residents who complained about rats in relation to their home were more likely to cite concerns about rat-associated hazards. This underscores a growing awareness that not all rat-human interfaces–situations in which rats and people interact–present the same threats or risks. For instance, Himsworth [38] describes how in most cases, rats are a relatively minor threat to people, becoming problematic in certain situations such as when inside the home. Our findings align with this view, as residents were more concerned with rats in their homes than they were with rats outdoors. Another example in which rats might pose a minor threat to people is in sewers. While these rats are relatively understudied [39], sewers were never mentioned in these complaints, indicating that there may not be an important interface between sewer rats and people in Vancouver. As such, sewer rat control programs that exist in other areas [24] may not be worth prioritizing in this city. Instead, these complaints suggest that rat management programs will better serve residents’ needs by only providing rat control services in specific instances when they are in peoples’ homes. While it might be outside of the jurisdiction of a program to send a pest management professional into someone’s house, municipalities do have responsibilities to design and enforce bylaws that hold residents and landlords accountable to state of their property and its impacts on tenants and neighbors [13].

4.4 Actions requested

Complaints were made when residents wanted the municipal government to intervene to fix a broad community issue. This aligns with the finding that the highest rates of complaints came from the most deprived areas where people may have the least resources to address rat problems on their own and where these community issues may be more common. Accordingly, complainants either requested that the municipality fix the issues directly (i.e., send people to clean up the garbage issue, cut back overgrown vegetation) or that they force the responsible resident to address the issue (i.e., force their neighbor to clean their yard, force their landlord to improve their property). This highlights the importance of expanding management efforts beyond traditional lethal techniques to refocus on other activities. Many previous authors have recognized the need to develop and enforce bylaws about rats and associated issues in order to effectively manage urban rat problems [13,22,40,41]. In New York City, management efforts are centered on locating environmental conditions conducive to rat populations and forcing property owners to fix them [42]. In instances where the municipality is directly responsible for services (i.e., garbage pickup, waste bin supply and maintenance, park and vegetation management), rat management programs might serve to identify gaps in those services contributing to the rat population and alert the responsible municipal department of the need for improvements. Such a function would have the co-benefit of serving as an important evaluation metric for many different municipal services that rats affect.

4.5 Community consultation

This study emphasizes the importance of human dimensions in municipal rat management and the need to focus management objectives on the actual needs and desires of residents. With current rat reduction objectives, municipal rat programs are often underfunded relative to their lofty mandates to reduce rats across entire cities [13,26,41]. This study suggests that prioritizing rats is a challenge for communities that face many other and often more pressing issues. As such, management programs focused on reducing rats are likely to become a low priority for residents living in these neighborhoods. This may be a key reason that municipal rat programs are so often underfunded [13,26,28,41]–they are not designed to address the issues the urban residents are most concerned about. Municipalities who consult with communities will be best positioned to address their needs and to create approaches that manage the suite of intersecting issues that residents prioritize.

Community consultation has been helpful in the management of other urban wildlife species. For example, residents of Banff, Canada formed a community-based advisory committee to work with Parks Canada to manage growing elk populations which were causing significant ecological and public safety problems [43]. Community consultation not only helped to increase community awareness of the problem, but it also helped to prioritize areas where elk populations should be reduced because of high elk-human conflict and actions to take to reduce that conflict. While this work is not directly analogous to urban rat problems, the community-based advisory committee worked to develop strategies specifically to reduce the significance of elk-human interactions resulting in negative conflict. In the context of this study, we found that rat management objectives would be better framed around addressing broader community health problems and providing more direct rat management services in instances where rats pose an immediate hazard to residents because of close contact, similar to reducing elk-human conflict in Banff. However, it isn’t clear how the content of the rat complaints reviewed in this study may vary across space and time. Future studies should examine community needs with regard to rats in other cities and explore how those needs can be integrated into municipal management programs.

4.6 Limitations

This study had important limitations. First, we were unable to determine the degree to which these complaints were representative of rat issues experienced by the general population in Vancouver. Many people in the city might not know about these complaint services and the people who complain may differ in values or characteristics from those who don’t. For example, the association between complaints and increasing deprivation may reflect the fact that people living in privileged areas address rat problems on their own instead of reporting complaints to the city. Future work should focus on getting a more representative sample of the population by providing phone operators with a standardized set of questions, deploying a questionnaire to a randomly selected sample of the population, or implementing a dedicated rat/wildlife hotline. Second, most complainants (69.6%) did not share a desired action, and we could not determine the exact motivations for the complaints. However, it seems unlikely that residents were making complaints to the city unless they wanted the city to take action to affect change over the problem they were complaining about. Further, complaints made by phone were summarised by a 311 operator, who then referred the complaint to the responsible municipal department. It may be the case that the operator did not record the action desired and instead relied on the responsible department to determine what actions to take. Third, because we included only secondary use of complaint data, we inferred the primary reasons for complaining based on what was written. Municipalities looking to develop their own rat management strategies with objectives that align with their citizens’ needs would benefit from directly engaging with residents in the design of their programs.

5. Conclusions

This study shows that urban rats are integrated with residents’ concerns about many other aspects of urban life and municipal services. We demonstrate the utility of using municipal complaint data to better understand the needs and desires of urban residents and we suggest that this information be used by cities to develop municipal management programs which more directly manage the issues that people care about. Overall, we present evidence that municipal rat management programs designed primarily to reduce rats across cities in as many outdoor spaces as possible are unlikely to meet the varied needs and desires of residents. Existing programs designed with this objective may face inevitable resource limitations and funding challenges due to low prioritization. The complaints reviewed in this study suggest the need for programs to expand management efforts beyond traditional extermination methods because they may not address residents’ concerns. Instead, to meet citizen needs more directly, cities should refocus on activities that address broader community problems including bylaw development, bylaw enforcement, and ongoing evaluation and improvement of municipal services associated with rat issues. Direct rat control services might best be directed to specific instances in which the hazards associated with rats are highest, such as when they are in and around peoples’ livings spaces and properties.

Supporting information

S1 Table. Complaint categories pre-defined by the City of Vancouver.

The City used these categories to categorize complaints according to their contents.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(19.9KB, docx)}

Data Availability

Data used in this study was obtained from the City of Vancouver and is governed by the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act. The findings and conclusions in this publication do not reflect the opinions of the data stewards. Data stewards provided this data to the study authors specifically for the purposes of informing the development of suitable rat management protocols for Vancouver and cannot be shared by study authors. Data is held by the City of Vancouver and readers can refer to https://vancouver.ca/your-government/freedom-of-information.aspx to request access to data or they can contact the Access to Information and Privacy office at foi@vancouver.ca.

Funding Statement

This work was funded by the City of Vancouver’s 2018-2020 Street Cleaning Grant Program in support of their efforts to establish suitable rat management protocols for Vancouver. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

References

1.Himsworth CG, Parsons KL, Jardine C, Patrick DM. Rats, cities, people, and pathogens: a systematic review and narrative synthesis of literature regarding the ecology of rat-associated zoonoses in urban centers. Vector-Borne Zoonotic Dis. 2013. Apr;13(6):349 359. doi: 10.1089/vbz.2012.1195 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
2.Byrd RS, Joad JP. Urban asthma. Curr Opin Pulm Med. 2006;12(1):68–74. doi: 10.1097/01.mcp.0000199001.68908.45 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
3.Perry T, Matsui E, Merriman B, Duong T, Eggleston P. The prevalence of rat allergen in inner-city homes and its relationship to sensitization and asthma morbidity. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2003;112(2):346–52. doi: 10.1067/mai.2003.1640 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
4.German D, Latkin CA. Exposure to urban rats as a community stressor among low-income urban residents. J Community Psychol. 2016;44(2):249–62. [Google Scholar]
5.Murray MH, Byers KA, Buckley J, Magle SB, Maffei D, Waite P, et al. “I don’t feel safe sitting in my own yard”: Chicago resident experiences with urban rats during a COVID-19 stay-at-home order. BMC Public Health. 2021;21(1):1008. doi: 10.1186/s12889-021-11095-y [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
6.Tobin ME, Fall MW. Pest control: rodents. In: Lal R, editor. Agricultural Sciences: Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. Oxford, UK: UNESCO; 2004. [Google Scholar]
7.Battersby S, Hirschhorn RB, Amman BR. Commensal rodents. In: Bonnefoy X, Kampen H, Sweeney K, editors. Public Health Significance of Urban Pests. Copenhagen: World Health Organization; 2008. p. 387–419. [Google Scholar]
8.Garba M, Kane M, Gagare S, Kadaoure I, Sidikou R, Rossi JP, et al. Local perception of rodent-associated problems in Sahelian urban areas: a survey in Niamey, Niger. Urban Ecosyst. 2014;17(2):573–84. [Google Scholar]
9.Almeida A, Corrigan R, Sarno R. The economic impact of commensal rodents on small businesses in Manhattan’s chinatown: trends and possible causes. Suburb Sustain. 2013;1(1). [Google Scholar]
10.Byers KA, Cox SM, Lam R, Himsworth CG. “They’re always there”: resident experiences of living with rats in a disadvantaged urban neighbourhood. BMC Public Health. 2019;19:853. doi: 10.1186/s12889-019-7202-6 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
11.BC Coroners Service. Illicit drug overdose deaths in BC [Internet]. 2017. Available from: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/birth-adoption-death-marriage-and-divorce/deaths/coroners-service/statistical/illicitdrugoverdosedeathsinbc-findingsofcoronersinvestigations-final.pdf. [Google Scholar]
12.Lee MJ, Byers KA, Cox SM, Stephen C, Patrick DM, Himsworth CG. Stakeholder perspectives on the development and implementation of approaches to municipal rat management. J Urban Ecol. 2021;7(1). [Google Scholar]
13.Lee MJ, Byers KA, Stephen C, Patrick DM, Iwasawa S, Himsworth CG. Reconsidering the “war on rats”: what we know from over a century of research into municipal rat management. Front Ecol Evol. 2022;10. [Google Scholar]
14.Lee MJ, Byers KA, Cox SM, Stephen C, Patrick DM, Corrigan R, et al. Municipal urban rat management policies and programming in seven cities in the United States of America. J Urban Aff. 2022. Sep 20;0(0):1–15. [Google Scholar]
15.City of Vancouver. Contact the City of Vancouver [Internet]. 2022. Available from: https://vancouver.ca/your-government/contact-the-city-of-vancouver.aspx. [Google Scholar]
16.Institut national de santé publique du Québec. Material and Social Deprivation Index [Internet]. 2019. [cited 2023 Mar 7]. Available from: https://www.inspq.qc.ca/en/deprivation/material-and-social-deprivation-index. [Google Scholar]
17.Gamache P, Hamel D, Blaser C. Material and social deprivation index: a summary: overview of the methodology. Québec, Québec: INSPQ, Institut national de santé publique du Québec, BiESP, Bureau d’information et d’études en santé des populations; 2019. [Google Scholar]
18.Sandelowski M. Whatever happened to qualitative description? Res Nurs Health. 2000;23(4):334–40. doi: [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
19.Ligita T, Nurjannah I, Wicking K, Harvey N, Francis K. From textual to visual: the use of concept mapping as an analytical tool in a grounded theory study. Qual Res. 2020;22(2). [Google Scholar]
20.OpenStreetMap Contributers. OpenStreetMap. [cited 2023 Sep 20]. OpenStreetMap. Available from: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright.
21.Derges J, Lynch R, Clow A, Petticrew M, Draper A. Complaints about dog faeces as a symbolic representation of incivility in London, UK: a qualitative study. Crit Public Health. 2012. Dec;22(4):419–25. doi: 10.1080/09581596.2012.710738 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
22.German D, Latkin CA. Exposure to urban rats as a community stressor among low-income urban residents. J Community Psychol. 2016;44(2):249–62. [Google Scholar]
23.Davis DE. The characteristics of rat populations. Q Rev Biol. 1953;28(4):373–401. doi: 10.1086/399860 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
24.Bajomi D, Kiss Z, Nagai Y. 40 Years of rat control in Budapest: The importance of sewer treatments for effective rat control in urban areas. Int Pest Control. 2013;55(1):22–5. [Google Scholar]
25.TN Viral Desk. TIMESNOW. 2022. [cited 2022 Dec 6]. NYC is hiring rat hunter to control rodent issue. Available from: https://www.timesnownews.com/viral/new-york-city-rat-problem-ad-for-director-of-rodent-mitigation-article-95975497. [Google Scholar]
26.Brown LM, Laco J. Rodent control and public health an assessment of U.S. local rodent control programs [Internet]. National Association of County & City Health Officials; 2015. Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/docs/vector-profiles/assess-rodent-programs.pdf. [Google Scholar]
27.Drummond DC. Rat free towns the strategy of area control. J R Soc Promot Health. 1970;90(3):131–3. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
28.Colvin BA, Jackson WB. Urban rodent control programs for the 21st century. In: Singleton GR, Hinds LA, Liers H, Zhang Z, editors. Ecologically-based Rodent Management. Canberra, Australia: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research; 1999. p. 243–57. [Google Scholar]
29.Meyer A. Urban commensal rodent control: fact or fiction? Singleton GR, Hinds LA, Krebs CJ, Spratt DM, editors. ACIAR Monogr Ser. 2003;446–50. [Google Scholar]
30.Davis DE. A perspective on rat control. Public Health Rep. 1952. Sep;67(9):888–93. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
31.Fernández MS, Cavia R, Cueto GR, Suárez OV. Implementation and evaluation of an integrated program for rodent control in a shantytown of Buenos Aires city, Argentina. EcoHealth. 2007;4(3):271–7. [Google Scholar]
32.Lambropoulos AS, Fine JB, Perbeck A, Torres D, Glass GE, McHugh P, et al. Rodent control in urban areas An interdisciplinary approach. J Environ Health. 1999;61(6):12–7. [Google Scholar]
33.South EC, Hohl BC, Kondo MC, MacDonald JM, Branas CC. Effect of Greening Vacant Land on Mental Health of Community-Dwelling Adults. JAMA Netw Open. 2018. Jul 20;1(3):e180298. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
34.Margulis HL. Rat fields, neighborhood sanitation, and rat complaints in Newark, New Jersey. Geogr Rev. 1977. Apr;67(2):221–31. [Google Scholar]
35.Walsh MG. Rat sightings in New York City are associated with neighborhood sociodemographics, housing characteristics, and proximity to open public space. PeerJ. 2014;2:e533. doi: 10.7717/peerj.533 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
36.Childs JE, McLafferty SL, Sadek R, Miller GL, Khan AS, DuPree ER, et al. Epidemiology of rodent bites and prediction of rat infestation in New York City. Am J Epidemiol. 1998;148(1):78–87. doi: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a009563 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
37.Johnson S, Bragdon C, Olson C, Merlino M, Bonaparte S. Characteristics of the built environment and the presence of the Norway rat in New York City: results from a neighborhood rat surveillance program, 2008–2010. J Environ Health. 2016. Jun;78(10). [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
38.Himsworth C. The Conversation. 2019. [cited 2023 Jul 7]. Living with rats involves understanding the city as an ecosystem. Available from: http://theconversation.com/living-with-rats-involves-understanding-the-city-as-an-ecosystem-118383. [Google Scholar]
39.Guo X, Himsworth CG, Lee MJ, Byers KA. A systematic review of rat ecology in urban sewer systems. Rev Urban Ecosyst. 2022. [Google Scholar]
40.Colvin BA. A comprehensive rodent control program for Washington D.C. In: Proceedings of the nineteenth vertebrate pest conference. University of California Davis; 2000. [Google Scholar]
41.Kaukeinen DE. Rodent control in practice: Householders, pest control operators, and municipal authorities. In: Buckle AP, Smith RH, editors. Rodent pests and their controls. Oxfordshire, UK: CAB International; 1994. p. 249–71. [Google Scholar]
42.Bragdon C, Kass D, Matte T, Merlino M, Bonaparte S, Johnson S, et al. Evaluation of a neighborhood rat-management program—New York City, December 2007-August 2009. Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2012;61(37):733–6. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]
43.McCance EC, Decker DJ, Colturi AM, Baydack RK, Siemer WF, Curtis PD, et al. Importance of Urban Wildlife Management in the United States and Canada. Mammal Study. 2017. Mar;42(1):1–16. [Google Scholar]

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296920.r001

Decision Letter 0

Muhammad Khalid Bashir

18 Sep 2023

PONE-D-23-21231Urban rats are the ‘fall-guy’: Resident motivations for municipal rat complaintsPLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Lee,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

==============================

Authors need to explain the methodology and data more carefully for a general reader's understanding. Furthermore, the academic novelty needs to be highlighted.

==============================

Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 02 2023 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter.

If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols. Additionally, PLOS ONE offers an option for publishing peer-reviewed Lab Protocol articles, which describe protocols hosted on protocols.io. Read more information on sharing protocols at https://plos.org/protocols?utm_medium=editorial-email&utm_source=authorletters&utm_campaign=protocols.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Muhammad Khalid Bashir, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf.

2. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript:

“This work was funded by the City of Vancouver’s 2018-2020 Street Cleaning Grant Program in support of their efforts to establish suitable rat management protocols for Vancouver. “

We note that you have provided additional information within the Acknowledgements Section that is not currently declared in your Funding Statement. Please note that funding information should not appear in the Acknowledgments section or other areas of your manuscript. We will only publish funding information present in the Funding Statement section of the online submission form.

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

“This work was funded by the City of Vancouver’s 2018-2020 Street Cleaning Grant Program in support of their efforts to establish suitable rat management protocols for Vancouver. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.”

Please include your amended statements within your cover letter; we will change the online submission form on your behalf.

3. Please include captions for your Supporting Information files at the end of your manuscript, and update any in-text citations to match accordingly. Please see our Supporting Information guidelines for more information: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/supporting-information.

4. We note that Figure 3 in your submission contain [map/satellite] images which may be copyrighted. All PLOS content is published under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which means that the manuscript, images, and Supporting Information files will be freely available online, and any third party is permitted to access, download, copy, distribute, and use these materials in any way, even commercially, with proper attribution. For these reasons, we cannot publish previously copyrighted maps or satellite images created using proprietary data, such as Google software (Google Maps, Street View, and Earth). For more information, see our copyright guidelines: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/licenses-and-copyright.

We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission:

a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure 3 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license.

We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text:

“I request permission for the open-access journal PLOS ONE to publish XXX under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CCAL) CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Please be aware that this license allows unrestricted use and distribution, even commercially, by third parties. Please reply and provide explicit written permission to publish XXX under a CC BY license and complete the attached form.”

Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission.

In the figure caption of the copyrighted figure, please include the following text: “Reprinted from [ref] under a CC BY license, with permission from [name of publisher], original copyright [original copyright year].”

b. If you are unable to obtain permission from the original copyright holder to publish these figures under the CC BY 4.0 license or if the copyright holder’s requirements are incompatible with the CC BY 4.0 license, please either i) remove the figure or ii) supply a replacement figure that complies with the CC BY 4.0 license. Please check copyright information on all replacement figures and update the figure caption with source information. If applicable, please specify in the figure caption text when a figure is similar but not identical to the original image and is therefore for illustrative purposes only.

The following resources for replacing copyrighted map figures may be helpful:

USGS National Map Viewer (public domain): http://viewer.nationalmap.gov/viewer/

The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (public domain): http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap/

Maps at the CIA (public domain): https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html and https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/cia-maps-publications/index.html

NASA Earth Observatory (public domain): http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

Landsat: http://landsat.visibleearth.nasa.gov/

USGS EROS (Earth Resources Observatory and Science (EROS) Center) (public domain): http://eros.usgs.gov/#

Natural Earth (public domain): http://www.naturalearthdata.com/

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

Reviewer #2: No

**********

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: No

**********

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This research has encompass the issue of rats very well. Its method are appropriate and qualitative procedures are well adopted. The researchers created a combined index of material and social deprivation using the first strategy recommended in the MSDI user guide but in results section, findings related to this index are not highlighted.

The manuscript is well written.

Reviewer #2: The authors have attempted to study an interesting issue. However, the design of the study and the nature of data don't meet the standards of sufficient academic rigor. Data analysis is limited to summary statistics.

**********

6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: Yes: Dr. Saima Afzal

Reviewer #2: No

**********

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

PLoS One. 2024 Feb 8;19(2):e0296920. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296920.r002

Author response to Decision Letter 0

12 Oct 2023

Editor Comments:

==============================

Authors need to explain the methodology and data more carefully for a general reader's understanding. Furthermore, the academic novelty needs to be highlighted.

==============================

Author Response: Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. We have addressed this helpful feedback throughout the manuscript, with responses below. First, we have revised the Methods section to more clearly explain the methodology and data for general readers. We have also moved the supplementary table describing the qualitative coding process into the main text so that the methods are clear without needing to go to the supporting information. Second, we have revised and shortened the Introduction section to clarify why this study is important and to highlight its academic novelty.

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=wjVg/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_main_body.pdf and

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=ba62/PLOSOne_formatting_sample_title_authors_affiliations.pdf.

2. Thank you for stating the following in the Acknowledgments Section of your manuscript:

“This work was funded by the City of Vancouver’s 2018-2020 Street Cleaning Grant Program in support of their efforts to establish suitable rat management protocols for Vancouver. “

Please remove any funding-related text from the manuscript and let us know how you would like to update your Funding Statement. Currently, your Funding Statement reads as follows:

Author Response: I have removed the funding information from the acknowledgements. Please keep the funding statement as is stated immediately above this response.

Author Response: I have included captions for the supporting information at the end of the manuscript.

We require you to either (1) present written permission from the copyright holder to publish these figures specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license, or (2) remove the figures from your submission:

a. You may seek permission from the original copyright holder of Figure 3 to publish the content specifically under the CC BY 4.0 license.

We recommend that you contact the original copyright holder with the Content Permission Form (http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/file?id=7c09/content-permission-form.pdf) and the following text:

Please upload the completed Content Permission Form or other proof of granted permissions as an "Other" file with your submission.

Author Response: The background map used in Figure 3 is sourced from ‘OpenStreetMaps’ (Hyperlink). These maps are open data and are freely available for use under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license (CC BY-SA 2.0). I have included a citation for OpenStreetMaps in the revised manuscript in the figure 3 caption. This data is “free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt … as long as you credit OpenStreetMap and its contributors.”

Reviewer 1:

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #1: Yes

________________________________________

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: N/A

________________________________________

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

Reviewer #1: Yes

________________________________________

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

Reviewer #1: Yes

________________________________________

5. Review Comments to the Author

The manuscript is well written.

Author Response: Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. To address your main concern, we have further explained in the Methods section how we assessed the deprivation data. We have also more clearly highlighted the results related to the deprivation index in the Results section and in the Discussion. Overall, we found that there was some evidence that complaints were more common in areas with higher levels of deprivation. This is consistent with expectations based on the previous literature and we discuss the implications of this in section 4.3 in the Discussion.

Reviewer 2:

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #2: No

________________________________________

2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #2: No

________________________________________

3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

Reviewer #2: No

________________________________________

4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

Reviewer #2: Yes

________________________________________

5. Review Comments to the Author

Author Response: Thank you for taking the time to review our manuscript. To address your concerns about the nature of these data, the design of the study, and the use of summary statistics we have further clarified in the manuscript that this is a qualitative study in which the primary objective of the analysis was to describe the content of these textual complaints made to the City about rats. We use a method called ‘qualitative description’ which we support with references in the Methods section. This method focuses on summarizing the breadth of content in these complaints to understand why different people in the City of Vancouver cared enough about rats to complain about them. As a result, we only provide summary statistics so that readers can get a sense of the breadth of the different kinds of complaints. We do not perform further statistical analysis because these complaints were not collected from a representative sample of the general population and thus statistical conclusions could lead to erroneous inferences about the distribution of these rat problems in the wider population.

Attachment

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx

Click here for additional data file.^{(19.8KB, docx)}

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296920.r003

Decision Letter 1

Muhammad Khalid Bashir

26 Dec 2023

Urban rats are the ‘fall-guy’: Resident motivations for municipal rat complaints

PONE-D-23-21231R1

Dear Dr. Lee,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Muhammad Khalid Bashir, PhD

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed

**********

2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

Reviewer #3: Partly

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

Reviewer #3: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Reviewer #3: I have looked at the reviewer comments and compared original version with the revised one. I am satisfied with the revision and paper can be accepted.

**********

7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #3: No

**********

PLoS One. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0296920.r004

Acceptance letter

Muhammad Khalid Bashir

9 Jan 2024

PONE-D-23-21231R1

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Lee,

I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now being handed over to our production team.

At this stage, our production department will prepare your paper for publication. This includes ensuring the following:

* All references, tables, and figures are properly cited

* All relevant supporting information is included in the manuscript submission,

* There are no issues that prevent the paper from being properly typeset

If revisions are needed, the production department will contact you directly to resolve them. If no revisions are needed, you will receive an email when the publication date has been set. At this time, we do not offer pre-publication proofs to authors during production of the accepted work. Please keep in mind that we are working through a large volume of accepted articles, so please give us a few weeks to review your paper and let you know the next and final steps.

Lastly, if your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

If we can help with anything else, please email us at customercare@plos.org.

Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access.

Kind regards,

PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff

on behalf of

Dr. Muhammad Khalid Bashir

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Associated Data

This section collects any data citations, data availability statements, or supplementary materials included in this article.

Supplementary Materials

S1 Table. Complaint categories pre-defined by the City of Vancouver.

The City used these categories to categorize complaints according to their contents.

(DOCX)

Click here for additional data file.^{(19.9KB, docx)}

Attachment

Submitted filename: Response to Reviewers.docx

Click here for additional data file.^{(19.8KB, docx)}

Data Availability Statement

[pone.0296920.ref001] 1.Himsworth CG, Parsons KL, Jardine C, Patrick DM. Rats, cities, people, and pathogens: a systematic review and narrative synthesis of literature regarding the ecology of rat-associated zoonoses in urban centers. Vector-Borne Zoonotic Dis. 2013. Apr;13(6):349 359. doi: 10.1089/vbz.2012.1195 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref002] 2.Byrd RS, Joad JP. Urban asthma. Curr Opin Pulm Med. 2006;12(1):68–74. doi: 10.1097/01.mcp.0000199001.68908.45 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref003] 3.Perry T, Matsui E, Merriman B, Duong T, Eggleston P. The prevalence of rat allergen in inner-city homes and its relationship to sensitization and asthma morbidity. J Allergy Clin Immunol. 2003;112(2):346–52. doi: 10.1067/mai.2003.1640 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref004] 4.German D, Latkin CA. Exposure to urban rats as a community stressor among low-income urban residents. J Community Psychol. 2016;44(2):249–62. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref005] 5.Murray MH, Byers KA, Buckley J, Magle SB, Maffei D, Waite P, et al. “I don’t feel safe sitting in my own yard”: Chicago resident experiences with urban rats during a COVID-19 stay-at-home order. BMC Public Health. 2021;21(1):1008. doi: 10.1186/s12889-021-11095-y [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref006] 6.Tobin ME, Fall MW. Pest control: rodents. In: Lal R, editor. Agricultural Sciences: Encyclopedia of Life Support Systems. Oxford, UK: UNESCO; 2004. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref007] 7.Battersby S, Hirschhorn RB, Amman BR. Commensal rodents. In: Bonnefoy X, Kampen H, Sweeney K, editors. Public Health Significance of Urban Pests. Copenhagen: World Health Organization; 2008. p. 387–419. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref008] 8.Garba M, Kane M, Gagare S, Kadaoure I, Sidikou R, Rossi JP, et al. Local perception of rodent-associated problems in Sahelian urban areas: a survey in Niamey, Niger. Urban Ecosyst. 2014;17(2):573–84. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref009] 9.Almeida A, Corrigan R, Sarno R. The economic impact of commensal rodents on small businesses in Manhattan’s chinatown: trends and possible causes. Suburb Sustain. 2013;1(1). [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref010] 10.Byers KA, Cox SM, Lam R, Himsworth CG. “They’re always there”: resident experiences of living with rats in a disadvantaged urban neighbourhood. BMC Public Health. 2019;19:853. doi: 10.1186/s12889-019-7202-6 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref011] 11.BC Coroners Service. Illicit drug overdose deaths in BC [Internet]. 2017. Available from: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/birth-adoption-death-marriage-and-divorce/deaths/coroners-service/statistical/illicitdrugoverdosedeathsinbc-findingsofcoronersinvestigations-final.pdf. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref012] 12.Lee MJ, Byers KA, Cox SM, Stephen C, Patrick DM, Himsworth CG. Stakeholder perspectives on the development and implementation of approaches to municipal rat management. J Urban Ecol. 2021;7(1). [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref013] 13.Lee MJ, Byers KA, Stephen C, Patrick DM, Iwasawa S, Himsworth CG. Reconsidering the “war on rats”: what we know from over a century of research into municipal rat management. Front Ecol Evol. 2022;10. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref014] 14.Lee MJ, Byers KA, Cox SM, Stephen C, Patrick DM, Corrigan R, et al. Municipal urban rat management policies and programming in seven cities in the United States of America. J Urban Aff. 2022. Sep 20;0(0):1–15. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref015] 15.City of Vancouver. Contact the City of Vancouver [Internet]. 2022. Available from: https://vancouver.ca/your-government/contact-the-city-of-vancouver.aspx. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref016] 16.Institut national de santé publique du Québec. Material and Social Deprivation Index [Internet]. 2019. [cited 2023 Mar 7]. Available from: https://www.inspq.qc.ca/en/deprivation/material-and-social-deprivation-index. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref017] 17.Gamache P, Hamel D, Blaser C. Material and social deprivation index: a summary: overview of the methodology. Québec, Québec: INSPQ, Institut national de santé publique du Québec, BiESP, Bureau d’information et d’études en santé des populations; 2019. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref018] 18.Sandelowski M. Whatever happened to qualitative description? Res Nurs Health. 2000;23(4):334–40. doi: [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref019] 19.Ligita T, Nurjannah I, Wicking K, Harvey N, Francis K. From textual to visual: the use of concept mapping as an analytical tool in a grounded theory study. Qual Res. 2020;22(2). [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref020] 20.OpenStreetMap Contributers. OpenStreetMap. [cited 2023 Sep 20]. OpenStreetMap. Available from: https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright.

[pone.0296920.ref021] 21.Derges J, Lynch R, Clow A, Petticrew M, Draper A. Complaints about dog faeces as a symbolic representation of incivility in London, UK: a qualitative study. Crit Public Health. 2012. Dec;22(4):419–25. doi: 10.1080/09581596.2012.710738 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref022] 22.German D, Latkin CA. Exposure to urban rats as a community stressor among low-income urban residents. J Community Psychol. 2016;44(2):249–62. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref023] 23.Davis DE. The characteristics of rat populations. Q Rev Biol. 1953;28(4):373–401. doi: 10.1086/399860 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref024] 24.Bajomi D, Kiss Z, Nagai Y. 40 Years of rat control in Budapest: The importance of sewer treatments for effective rat control in urban areas. Int Pest Control. 2013;55(1):22–5. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref025] 25.TN Viral Desk. TIMESNOW. 2022. [cited 2022 Dec 6]. NYC is hiring rat hunter to control rodent issue. Available from: https://www.timesnownews.com/viral/new-york-city-rat-problem-ad-for-director-of-rodent-mitigation-article-95975497. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref026] 26.Brown LM, Laco J. Rodent control and public health an assessment of U.S. local rodent control programs [Internet]. National Association of County & City Health Officials; 2015. Available from: https://www.cdc.gov/nceh/ehs/docs/vector-profiles/assess-rodent-programs.pdf. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref027] 27.Drummond DC. Rat free towns the strategy of area control. J R Soc Promot Health. 1970;90(3):131–3. [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref028] 28.Colvin BA, Jackson WB. Urban rodent control programs for the 21st century. In: Singleton GR, Hinds LA, Liers H, Zhang Z, editors. Ecologically-based Rodent Management. Canberra, Australia: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research; 1999. p. 243–57. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref029] 29.Meyer A. Urban commensal rodent control: fact or fiction? Singleton GR, Hinds LA, Krebs CJ, Spratt DM, editors. ACIAR Monogr Ser. 2003;446–50. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref030] 30.Davis DE. A perspective on rat control. Public Health Rep. 1952. Sep;67(9):888–93. [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref031] 31.Fernández MS, Cavia R, Cueto GR, Suárez OV. Implementation and evaluation of an integrated program for rodent control in a shantytown of Buenos Aires city, Argentina. EcoHealth. 2007;4(3):271–7. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref032] 32.Lambropoulos AS, Fine JB, Perbeck A, Torres D, Glass GE, McHugh P, et al. Rodent control in urban areas An interdisciplinary approach. J Environ Health. 1999;61(6):12–7. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref033] 33.South EC, Hohl BC, Kondo MC, MacDonald JM, Branas CC. Effect of Greening Vacant Land on Mental Health of Community-Dwelling Adults. JAMA Netw Open. 2018. Jul 20;1(3):e180298. [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref034] 34.Margulis HL. Rat fields, neighborhood sanitation, and rat complaints in Newark, New Jersey. Geogr Rev. 1977. Apr;67(2):221–31. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref035] 35.Walsh MG. Rat sightings in New York City are associated with neighborhood sociodemographics, housing characteristics, and proximity to open public space. PeerJ. 2014;2:e533. doi: 10.7717/peerj.533 [DOI] [PMC free article] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref036] 36.Childs JE, McLafferty SL, Sadek R, Miller GL, Khan AS, DuPree ER, et al. Epidemiology of rodent bites and prediction of rat infestation in New York City. Am J Epidemiol. 1998;148(1):78–87. doi: 10.1093/oxfordjournals.aje.a009563 [DOI] [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref037] 37.Johnson S, Bragdon C, Olson C, Merlino M, Bonaparte S. Characteristics of the built environment and the presence of the Norway rat in New York City: results from a neighborhood rat surveillance program, 2008–2010. J Environ Health. 2016. Jun;78(10). [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref038] 38.Himsworth C. The Conversation. 2019. [cited 2023 Jul 7]. Living with rats involves understanding the city as an ecosystem. Available from: http://theconversation.com/living-with-rats-involves-understanding-the-city-as-an-ecosystem-118383. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref039] 39.Guo X, Himsworth CG, Lee MJ, Byers KA. A systematic review of rat ecology in urban sewer systems. Rev Urban Ecosyst. 2022. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref040] 40.Colvin BA. A comprehensive rodent control program for Washington D.C. In: Proceedings of the nineteenth vertebrate pest conference. University of California Davis; 2000. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref041] 41.Kaukeinen DE. Rodent control in practice: Householders, pest control operators, and municipal authorities. In: Buckle AP, Smith RH, editors. Rodent pests and their controls. Oxfordshire, UK: CAB International; 1994. p. 249–71. [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref042] 42.Bragdon C, Kass D, Matte T, Merlino M, Bonaparte S, Johnson S, et al. Evaluation of a neighborhood rat-management program—New York City, December 2007-August 2009. Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2012;61(37):733–6. [PubMed] [Google Scholar]

[pone.0296920.ref043] 43.McCance EC, Decker DJ, Colturi AM, Baydack RK, Siemer WF, Curtis PD, et al. Importance of Urban Wildlife Management in the United States and Canada. Mammal Study. 2017. Mar;42(1):1–16. [Google Scholar]

PERMALINK

Urban rats are the ‘fall-guy’: Resident motivations for municipal rat complaints

Michael Joseph Lee

Kaylee A Byers

Xiaocong Guo

Lisa K F Lee

Susan M Cox

Chelsea G Himsworth

Roles

Abstract

1. Introduction

2. Material and methods

2.1 Municipal rat complaints data

2.2 Deprivation data

2.3 Qualitative data analysis

Table 1. Details of the data analysis.

Fig 1. Qualitative codes for enumeration.

3. Results

3.1 General description of complaint content

3.2 Why were people complaining about rats?

Fig 2. Reasons that people complained about rats in the City of Vancouver.

3.3 Locations of complaints

3.3.1 Geographical distribution and deprivation

Fig 3. Geographic distribution of complaints.

3.3.2 Location related to complaint content

3.4 Actions requested

4. Discussion

4.1 Why did people complain about rats?

4.2 Rat-reduction objectives do not address residents’ concerns

4.3 Locations of complaints

4.4 Actions requested

4.5 Community consultation

4.6 Limitations

5. Conclusions

Supporting information

Data Availability

Funding Statement

References

Decision Letter 0

Muhammad Khalid Bashir

Roles

Author response to Decision Letter 0

Decision Letter 1

Muhammad Khalid Bashir

Roles

Acceptance letter

Muhammad Khalid Bashir

Roles

Associated Data

Supplementary Materials

Data Availability Statement

ACTIONS

PERMALINK

RESOURCES

Similar articles

Cited by other articles

Links to NCBI Databases