Can We Build Support for Welfare Enforcement (Animal Think Tank)
This report contains a "Summary of findings" section which is reproduced below.
Summary of findings
This study recruited 1,749 participants through an online research participant platform, and examined public attitudes towards animal protection, plant-based farming, and general views about our relationship with other animals. The participants were divided into 26 groups and exposed to various message frames about animal rights and farming practices. They then responded to questions about their likelihood of supporting petitions for enforcing animal protection laws or subsidising plant-based farming, along with questions about their general attitudes towards animals.
Key findings
High support for animal protection laws: A significant majority (84%) expressed a likelihood of supporting a petition to enforce existing animal protection laws for farmed animals. Even those primed with an industry-framed message were in high support, showing how little the UK public need to be persuaded to support this issue.
Mixed response to plant-based farming subsidies
Support was more divided regarding providing subsidies for farmers to transition to plant-based farming, with 52% in favour. Further testing may benefit from understanding the barriers to their support (e.g. fear of increased taxes to pay for the subsidies, reduced 'meat' availability, etc).
Age and gender had little effect on levels of support: There was virtually no difference in levels of support across age groups or gender of participants.
Attitudes were not improved by message framing
- Relative to the neutral control, the type of message presented to participants had no effect on their support for the enforcement petition or the attitude questions.
- While no messages improved support for the subsidies petition beyond the control message, three messages resulted in statistically reliable lower support than the neutral control message (with 95% confidence):
- welfare vs cost (industry)
- violated values
- Animal Equality message.
- Further testing may benefit from testing messages that directly speak to the call to action (transitioning to a plant-based food system).
In summary: This study reveals significant public support for enforcing existing animal protection laws and weaker support towards subsidising plant-based farming transitions. It also suggests that there is little evidence that the different messaging strategies tested here significantly improve public opinion on these issues.