This study focuses primarily on the varying reasons why Americans own dogs, and how those reasons may be more or less prevalent among various demographic groups. Primary reasons for dog ownership focused on in this study are utility, companionship, mental or physical health reasons, hunting, and home security. This study also reviews how extensively dogs are used for the various purposes that their owners identify for owning them.
A few of our hypotheses are as follows: We believe that we will be able to see a strong correlation with people’s reasons for owning a dog and their housing situation, and whether or not they identify as living in urban or rural areas.We think we will find that people use dogs less for utility and more for recreation because of increasing urbanization. Because of security concerns common to low income areas, we hypothesize that those with lower incomes will have more dogs owned for home security purposes. What we believe we will find is an increase in emotional support animals, and service animals as opposed to other uses in war veterans and people under the age of 25.
