Psychometric Validation of the Adapted Pet Attachment Questionnaire in Measuring Human–Horse Attachment

Attachment between humans and conventional pets like dogs and cats has been previously characterized by two dimensions: attachment-related anxiety and avoidance. This study used attachment theory as a framework to examine human-horse relationships by evaluating the psychometric properties of an adapted version of the Pet Attachment Questionnaire (PAQ), the Horse Attachment Questionnaire (HAQ). Horses exhibit the essential features that define an attachment figure, suggesting that the same attachment dimensions and assessment tools might apply to human-horse relationships. The psychometric properties of the HAQ were evaluated with online survey data from 2,287 horse owners worldwide. In the exploratory factor analysis, 21 of the original 26 items loaded onto their theoretically predicted factors, anxiety and avoidance. We performed a two-fold cross-validation and cross-cultural validation, comparing the two largest nationality groups in our dataset - French (922 respondents) and Finnish (765 respondents) - and the two-factor structure persisted. Supporting the convergent validity of the HAQ, correlations similar to those of human and human-pet relationships were observed with respect to owner age, gender, and neuroticism score. Specifically, younger age and neuroticism were positively associated with an anxious attachment style, while male gender was positively associated with an avoidant attachment style toward a horse. Individual differences in human-horse attachment occur in the dimensions of attachment-related anxiety and avoidance, and the HAQ survey tool developed to measure these dimensions is a conceptually and statistically sound way of examining human-horse attachment. This study deepens our understanding of how attachment styles extend to nonhuman attachment figures and lays the groundwork for more comprehensive future research into the variables associated with attachment in human-horse interactions.