Development and validation of A scale for measuring pet owners' loyalty to their pet

To date, many studies have been conducted and many scales have been developed to understand the human-animal relationship dating back thousands of years. However, there is no information that a scale has been developed to measure the loyalty levels of pet owners to their animals. The aim of this thesis is to introduce a measurement tool to the literature that can measure the loyalty levels of people towards their pets. Qualitative method for discovering items that will enter the scale that will be called the Pet Loyalty Scale; The quantitative method (Explanatory Factor Analysis and Confirmatory Factor Analysis) was used to determine the variables affecting the level of loyalty and to determine the validity and reliability of the scale. Qualitative research in Bursa; First Quantitative Research in Istanbul; The second Quantitative Research was carried out by interviewing animal owners in veterinary clinics in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. As a result of the analyzes, a 19-item Pet Loyalty Scale was developed, which consists of four components: 'Hearty commitment', 'Stability', 'Possibility of giving up' and 'Responsibility' and has sufficient validity and reliability to measure the loyalty of animal owners to their animals. In addition, the relationship of the developed scale with demographic variables was analyzed and the first application results of Pet Loyalty Scale were obtained. According to the results, as the age of the participants increased, their level of loyalty to their animals decreased (p<0.01); as the age of the animal increased, the level of loyalty increased (p<0.05). In terms of gender and marital status parameter, women compared to men (p<0.01); It has been determined that singles are more loyal to their animals than married ones (p<0.05). In addition, it was observed that as the income level of the participants increased, their loyalty level to their animals decreased (p<0.001).