This Faunalytics study examines a broad range of demographics and shows how advocates working with specific groups can craft asks that are most likely to appeal to them.

Key Findings

1. The groups who are most and least likely to take pro-animal actions are often divided along political lines. For example, 84% of Democrats would vote for a ballot measure aimed at improving conditions for farmed animals compared to only 56% of Republicans. This gap is also visible between people on both sides of a politicized issue like climate change. For example, 68% of people who believe climate change is a serious problem are likely to sign a farmed animal welfare petition compared to only 35% of people who are not concerned about climate change.
2. Being concerned about climate change could make more of a difference in someone’s openness to many pro-animal actions than being an animal lover. As you might expect, people who identified as animal lovers were much more open to pro-animal actions than non-animal lovers. However, the differences between climate-concerned people and non-climate-concerned people were often even bigger. For example, climate-concerned people were 45 percentage points more supportive of Meatless Monday school lunch policies than non-climate-concerned people. Animal lovers were only 19 percentage points more likely to support this type of policy than non-animal lovers.
3. Black, Indigenous, and People of the Global Majority (BIPGM) individuals are often more open to pro-animal actions than white people. However, the degree of openness depends on the action. For example, Black participants reported the highest likelihood of removing beef and pork from their diets (27%), going pescatarian (21%), and going vegan (12%), but were not among the groups most open to most non-diet actions. Hispanic or Latino/a/x participants were the second most likely to share a post related to farm animal welfare on social media (45%) or attend a protest or demonstration (29%), and other BIPGM participants were among the most likely to use a plant-based protein as the main protein in a meal (58%), order a vegetarian entrée at a restaurant (52%), and purchase a meat substitute (43%). In contrast, white participants were not among the most likely groups to take any of the pro-animal actions studied.
4. People are most open to simple actions that result in institutional change. Overall, we estimate that people in the U.S. are most open to voting for a ballot measure designed to improve conditions for farmed animals, signing a petition aimed at improving farmed animal welfare, and supporting Meatless Mondays in schools. Over 60% of the U.S. public said they would vote for a farmed animal-focused ballot measure, sign a farmed animal-focused petition, or support a Meatless Mondays school lunch policy.
5. Speciesism varies across characteristic groups. Non-animal lovers, people who aren’t concerned about climate change, conservatives, and Republicans had the highest levels of speciesism, while people outside the gender binary, liberals, women, Hispanic or Latino/a/x people, and Democrats had the lowest levels of speciesism.

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