Planting Seeds- The Impact Of Diet & Different Animal Advocacy Tactics (Faunalytics)
Background
Many different approaches to advocacy exist within the animal protection movement, from talking to people you know about animal suffering, to sharing social media posts, to protesting in public spaces. Currently, we do not fully understand how these approaches affect people’s behaviors, beliefs, and attitudes towards farmed animals, or even how common they are.
We conducted two studies in the U.S. to address this topic as fully and accurately as possible. The first was a retrospective survey. It explored people’s experiences with different advocacy types within the last five years and measured their current behaviors and attitudes. This tells us how common animal advocacy is from the average person’s perspective and whether previously experiencing animal advocacy is associated with positive behavior and attitude changes towards farmed animals over the long term. However, we can’t necessarily assume that animal advocacy caused those behaviors and attitudes from a study like this. To assess people’s perceptions of what is most impactful, we also directly asked them whether their most recent experience with animal advocacy changed any of their behaviors.
The second study was an experiment, which lets us be surer about causal direction (i.e., whether advocacy caused behavioral and attitudinal changes or instead, whether people with pro-animal behaviors or attitudes sought out advocacy). Here, we investigated the impact of many types of animal advocacy against a control condition on people’s immediate behaviors and attitudes towards farmed animals.
The ultimate goal of this project was to estimate how successful each advocacy type is across both the short- and long-term. While the retrospective survey gives us insightful information about what people think caused them to change their behavior and allows us to consider a wider range of advocacy types, the experiment provides stronger evidence of whether animal advocacy actually changes behavior, in a controlled setting with less opportunity for bias.
Key Findings
- News articles and social media posts reduced self-reported animal product consumption for people who identify as part of a meat-avoiding group, but not for full meat-eaters (omnivores). Meat-avoiders (reducetarians, pescetarians, and vegetarians) ate 1.3 to 2.3 fewer weekly servings of animal products after reading a social media post or news article about farmed animal welfare compared to those in the control group. Meat-eaters’ diets were unaffected by these forms of advocacy.
- Protests showed inconsistent but troubling backfire effects for both meat-eaters and meat-avoiders, with disruptive protests causing more issues. On average, meat-eaters reported 0.6 more weekly servings of animal products after watching a disruptive protest compared to those in the control group. Neither disruptive nor non-disruptive protests had any effect on meat-eaters’ general support for farmed animal welfare or willingness to sign a welfare petition. Further, while meat-avoiders tend to be more supportive of welfare improvements (71% in the control group signed a welfare petition), significantly fewer meat-avoiders (44-50%) signed the petition after watching either a disruptive or non-disruptive protest. Protests also had no effect on meat-avoiders’ diets or general support for farmed animal welfare. We discuss possible reasons for the backfire effects in the Overall Conclusions section of the report.
- Whether someone is a meat-eater or a meat-avoider also influences how they respond to advocacy, which in turn predicts their likelihood to take a diet pledge and to sign a petition. As expected, meat-eaters were more likely than meat-avoiders to be angry in response to animal advocacy, to perceive it as more condescending and misleading, and less clear, engaging, and informative. In turn, the people who react the most negatively are the least likely to sign a petition supporting welfare improvements and to take a diet pledge. See Recommendation #6 for how advocates can consider such reactions when designing their advocacy tactics.
- Educational information about animal welfare labels didn’t change people’s intentions to purchase animal products with or without a welfare label. We had suspected that educational information about the meaning of welfare labels might increase purchase intentions for products with them and decrease purchase intentions for those without. However, the purchase intentions of meat-eaters and meat-avoiders who read educational information were no different than the control group.
- People’s support to sign a welfare petition was influenced by the species targeted. Participants were less likely to sign a petition supporting fish welfare improvements (45% of participants in the fish condition) compared to one about farmed animals in general (52% of participants in the mix of farmed animals condition).
- 41% of individuals who had experienced animal advocacy claimed that it influenced them to reduce their animal product consumption, with rates ranging from 24% for celebrity endorsements to 72% for reading a book about animal suffering. There were similarly high claims and wide ranges for other effects. Overall, books, meat-free challenges, classroom education, and documentaries appeared to be most effective on the basis of self-report. However, these percentages are probably substantially inflated because participants had to remember their advocacy experiences to report their effects. In the case of experiences like books and challenges, the percentages may also be higher because people must choose to engage with them (see Conclusions tab under Study 1). These results are most useful to provide a rough idea of the relative effectiveness of different advocacy tactics under optimal circumstances with an engaged audience.
- Different animal advocacy methods were similarly effective across racial and ethnic groups, but some baseline differences point to the need for a deeper understanding. Our experiment found no evidence that the relative effectiveness of different advocacy methods was any different for Black (n = 170 participants) or Hispanic/Latinx participants (n = 180), so the recommendations below also apply for advocates working in those communities. However, advocates should bear some baseline differences in mind- Hispanic or Latinx participants showed several more pro-animal behaviors and attitudes than the overall average, while Black participants showed fewer. However, both of these groups ate a similar amount of animal products as the overall sample. These findings suggest differences in challenges, constraints, and opportunities by community makeup, but please see the Overall Conclusions for more detailed implications.
Recommendations
- The results of this project primarily support the use of two forms of advocacy- social media posts and news articles. Social media posts and news articles effectively reduced self-reported animal product consumption in meat-avoiders and had no harmful effects on meat-eaters. They are also easier to implement and are lower cost than many other strategies, so we unconditionally recommend their use. If it would decrease costs, organizations could also consider targeting posts toward reducetarians and vegetarians rather than trying to persuade a general audience.
- We also recommend forms of animal advocacy that were described as behavior-changing by people in Study 1 and that have been supported by causal evidence in other experiments- classroom education and meat-free challenges. 58% and 63% of our participants who had experienced these forms of advocacy reported reduced animal product consumption, respectively, and other research supports this claim (see the Overall Conclusions section).
- We weakly recommend forms of advocacy that positively impacted meat-eaters’ intentions or beliefs, but had no impact on behavior- graphic videos, leaflets, non-graphic videos, and celebrities. Our experiment did not find any impact of these forms of advocacy on behaviors, which is a substantial downside. However, if they can be made cost-effectively, swaying meat-eaters’ intentions or beliefs may also be useful, in that it moves them one step closer to behavior change. The impact of these advocacy types on meat-eaters’ intentions and beliefs varied so there is not sufficient space to cover them fairly here. Please see the Overall Conclusions section for more information.
- We recommend caution around the use of advocacy types that have not been supported by experimental data- educational information about animal welfare labels, documentaries, and billboards. The limited experimental research to date suggests that these advocacy types don’t impact people’s behaviors, with some evidence suggesting a positive impact on intentions only for documentaries and educational information. But we encourage additional experimental research for these three advocacy types since our caution is based on limited research.
- The limited evidence from our two studies suggests that protests aren’t helpful, and may in some cases cause harm. While it’s important to note that our two studies don’t provide definitive proof of protests’ ineffectiveness by any means (and we don’t know of any other experimental research looking at them), our experiment found that disruptive protests increased meat-eaters’ self-reported consumption of animal products, while both disruptive and non-disruptive protests resulted in fewer petition signatures for animal welfare reforms in meat-avoiders. The accumulated evidence to date—which is minimal and would benefit from further study—leads us to believe that their impact is neutral at best, negative at worst.
- Advocates can ensure that their advocacy materials of any type are as impactful as possible by testing how people respond to them. Specifically, advocates should strive to make their materials informative, engaging, and clear about the behavior change they suggest, as all of these characteristics were linked to taking a diet pledge and supporting welfare improvements. At the same time, advocates should aim to minimize perceptions of their materials as misleading, condescending, and angering, as these responses made people less willing to engage in pro-animal behavior. To support this kind of testing, we have included a simple survey and instructions for use on the Supplementary Materials tab.
- Strong evidence about the impact of different advocacy types is still very limited, so more research is needed before making major changes to campaign or funding strategies. Throughout the report, we have placed more weight on evidence of behavior change versus intentions or beliefs, but we recommend that advocates and funders continue to support and study advocacy types that positively impact intentions or beliefs, and continue to study all kinds of advocacy, even those that appeared to have negative implications in this research. Behavior change occurs in stages, so advocacy types that only influenced beliefs or intentions may still play a role in a long line of steps toward behavior change. And while we have strived to provide usable recommendations about all the advocacy types we considered, bear in mind that every study has its limitations, and no single report should ever be taken as definitive proof of impact.