Dog owners feel more connected to their neighborhoods

A new Japanese study of 377 adults suggests that owning a dog quietly strengthens how connected people feel to their neighborhood. 

Residents in a suburb west of Tokyo who lived with dogs reported a richer sense of belonging than neighbors without pets. 

The work was led by social psychologist Itaru Ishiguro, Ph.D., at Rikkyo University near Tokyo. His research focuses on everyday social ties and human-animal interaction, and he collaborated with colleagues at Azabu University in Sagamihara.

In the new study, the team compared dog owners and non-owners on three distinct kinds of neighborly contact. 

They looked at brief chats with strangers, close neighborhood friendships, and anchored personal relationships, recurring ties rooted in specific shared places and activities. 

The main question was whether people with dogs built more of these local ties and, through them, a stronger sense of community. 

People, dogs, and neighborhoods

In practice, anchored personal relationships might be the familiar faces you greet in the park or at the corner shop every afternoon.

These ties feel friendly and predictable, yet people usually do not swap phone numbers or invite one another into their homes.

The study argues that this middle layer of connection sits between quick incidental encounters and deep friendships in terms of intimacy and continuity. 

Because these acquaintances almost always live nearby and share the same streets, the authors expected them to matter most for neighborhood belonging. 

Dogs vs other neighborhood pets

When the team separated dog owners from people who kept cats or other animals, dog ownership alone showed a link with neighborhood relationships. 

One likely reason is simply that dogs need daily walks in shared spaces, while many other pets stay almost entirely indoors.

In the survey data, ownership of cats and other pets did not relate to any relationship type or to sense of community. 

That pattern suggests it is the shared walking routine, not pet ownership in general, that connects dog owners strongly to neighborhood social life. 

What the survey captured

Researchers recruited several hundred adults living in Sagamihara City and nearby areas through posters, flyers, community events, and local government channels. 

Participants completed an online or paper questionnaire about pet ownership, social contact around their homes, and how attached they felt to their area. 

The sense of community questions drew on a standard place attachment scale that measures how strongly people feel rooted in specific locations.

To untangle links between variables, the analysts used generalized structural equation modeling, a statistical technique that handles chains of cause and association. 

How ties strengthen

Dog owners were more likely than non-owners to report having people they regularly recognized in spots and frequent incidental conversations with passersby. 

However, once factors like age, income, education, gender, and housing were taken into account, owning a dog did not predict having neighborhood friends. 

All relationship types related to a stronger sense of community, yet only anchored personal relationships linked dog ownership directly to feeling locally rooted. 

“Anchored personal relationships should be considered alongside incidental interactions and friendships,” wrote Ishiguro. 

Global research links

Earlier work in Australian cities found that pet owners scored higher than non-owners on neighborhood social capital, trust, and civic engagement.

Those studies also noted that dogs, more than other pets, seemed especially effective at sparking conversations during walks and visits to public spaces.

The Japanese survey adds nuance by showing that chats and friendships are part of the picture, with anchored personal relationships carrying weight. 

Taken together, this growing body of work hints that the social benefits of living with animals extend well beyond companionship inside the home.

Who picks dogs

Because the survey was cross-sectional rather than experimental, the authors cannot rule out the possibility that outgoing people choose to own dogs. 

Personality traits such as extraversion, a tendency to seek stimulation, can predict both the size of someone’s network and their interest in pets.

Japan has relatively low relational mobility, a cultural pattern where new relationships are relatively hard to start. 

In that context, it is not surprising that dog ownership did not translate into more close neighborhood friends, even when casual contact increased. 

What this means for wellbeing

Many studies have explored whether living with pets improves health, with varied results but hints that dogs may support physical and mental wellbeing.

A Swedish cohort that followed more than three million adults found lower overall mortality among dog owners than among people without dogs. 

This community-focused work does not claim that dogs extend life, yet it suggests one social pathway through which health effects might emerge.

Feeling more rooted in a neighborhood might support mental health, reduce loneliness, and make it easier to seek help during stressful times.

Dogs strengthen neighborhood life

For people who already live with dogs, the findings highlight the quiet value of regular routes, familiar faces, and friendly short conversations. 

Stopping briefly to chat while following local rules about leashes and cleanup may be enough to build anchored personal relationships over time. 

Neighbors who do not own dogs can benefit by greeting walkers, since the study suggests those small interactions contribute meaningfully to community feeling. 

Put simply, the research suggests that every small, repeated meeting around a dog walk can add up to a welcoming neighborhood for everyone. 

The study is published in PLOS One.

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