Beliefs About Fishes and Chickens & Their Relation to Animal-Positive Behaviors in China

Background

Animals raised for food generally receive significantly less attention and funding than companion animals (Faunalytics, 2019), and small-bodied animals like chickens and fish are killed in particularly massive numbers. With China’s large population and export market, the slaughter statistics are among the highest in the world, despite lower per-capita consumption: Over ten billion chickens and close to 15 million tonnes of live fish were slaughtered for food in China in 2018 (Faunalytics, 2020). Unfortunately, as in many countries, the welfare of these animals is not well protected by Chinese law. The Animal Husbandry Law of the People’s Republic of China only covers animals classified as livestock and poultry, and contains minimal welfare standards primarily aimed at food safety (World Animal Protection, 2020). Due to the lack of detailed animal welfare standards, China receives a “G” grade for its protection of farmed animals used in farming from World Animal Protection.

A handful of studies have looked at Chinese perceptions and attitudes toward animal welfare, finding that many Chinese individuals are concerned with animal welfare to some extent (You et al, 2014; Su & Martens, 2017). However, to our knowledge there are no studies that examine the relationship between attitudes toward animals and willingness to take action on their behalf. As such, this study builds on the existing literature by documenting in finer detail which beliefs the Chinese public has about small-bodied animals, as well as how these beliefs are related to animal-positive behaviors. Specifically, we examined the relationships between various beliefs and a willingness to reduce consumption of chickens and fishes. Although our U.S. study also examined willingness to sign a petition calling for improved living and slaughter conditions, a petition is unlikely to be used in the Chinese context. As a result, we included a more general measure of support for improved conditions. Answering questions about the relationships between beliefs and these attitudes is a first step toward understanding what drives animal-positive behavior in China. The findings presented in this report may also prove useful to the Chinese animal protection community.

Key Findings

1. Large majorities of people pledged to reduce their consumption of fish or chicken. Over 70% of people committed to reduce their fish or chicken consumption, suggesting that advocates seeking dietary change may have considerable success even with limited messaging highlighting the benefits of such a change.
2. Some pro-animal beliefs are already common, but there is room for raising awareness on other topics. For example, large majorities recognize the importance of air and water quality to chickens and fishes. However most people do not believe big fish farms are gross or that chickens mind being in a barren environment. More commonly held beliefs likely do not require more information and can be invoked as necessary, but additional advocacy focused on less commonly held beliefs could increase the frequency of pro-animal beliefs among the public.
3. The beliefs that had the largest correlations with signing a pledge to reduce fish consumption were that fish can bond with humans, that fish are curious, and that fish are loving. Focusing advocacy efforts on bolstering these fish-related beliefs may be the most effective way to obtain dietary pledges to reduce consumption.
4. The beliefs that had the largest correlations with signing a pledge to reduce chicken consumption were that chickens can bond with humans and that chickens are more intelligent than people give them credit for. Those trying to get people to reduce their consumption of chicken may wish to focus on these themes.
5. Support for improvements to the quality of life for fishes and chickens is nearly unanimous. Those seeking to improve the conditions of animals have a strong base of support among the public. 

Recommendations

1. Try messaging around the top beliefs to see if you can improve your advocacy efforts. Based on these findings, messaging around personality, emotions, intelligence, and socialness will likely lead to the best results, even outside the context of diet pledges. Slightly different beliefs were also important for each animal. Therefore, we’d suggest focusing on the strongest messages in each group of beliefs, trying them out, and keeping track of their effectiveness in order to get the best results!
2. Consider asking for a diet pledge. These findings suggest that the Chinese public is already open to taking consumption reduction pledges. You may see a significant amount of uptake simply by asking if people would consider reducing the amount of animal products they consume.
3. Explore the results from other countries and check back for more recommendations as our program of research focusing on chickens and fishes continues. We have also examined these beliefs in other countries, including the U.S., Brazil, Canada, and India. We will also be using experimental research to provide stronger recommendations about how these beliefs can be leveraged to alter behaviors. Although we have provided preliminary recommendations in this report, an experimental comparison of the most common and strongly associated beliefs is needed to see which can be used most effectively. This research will focus on the U.S., but may have implications for future research in China. Stay tuned for more from our line of research into small-bodied animals!

Research Team

This project is a collaboration between researchers at Faunalytics and Mercy For Animals (MFA): namely, Zach Wulderk, Jo Anderson, and Tom Beggs of Faunalytics and Courtney Dillard, Walter Sanchez-Suarez, and Sebastian Quaade of MFA. We are indebted to Meredith Hui, Rashmit Arora, Diogo Fernandes, and Vitor Clemente for their assistance with linguistic and cultural translation, and to Cristina Mendonça, Meredith Hui, and Nikunj Sharma for their invaluable feedback.

We’d like to thank the CEA Animal Welfare Fund, the Culture and Animals Foundation, and an anonymous donor for funding this work, and the Tipping Point Private Foundation for funding the report translations.

Method Overview

This research is a replication of Faunalytics’ 2020 report Beliefs About Fish and Chickens & Their Relation to Animal-Positive Behaviors, which focused on U.S. adults’ beliefs about small-bodied animals. For this project, we explored beliefs held by adults in China. We translated Faunalytics’ previous survey for use with a Mandarin-speaking Chinese audience, and confirmed with experts that the questions were culturally relevant. On the advice of cultural advisors, we added two belief questions that were not part of the U.S. survey: “Fish/Chickens are easy to raise yourself” and “Fish/Chickens are aggressive.” These were added to reflect potential beliefs arising from the more common experience of raising chickens at home in China. We examined 7 categories of beliefs: about emotions, suffering, personality, intelligence, socialness, consuming the animal, and an “other” category. There were several beliefs in each category, meaning the full list consisted of 35 beliefs about fishes and 34 beliefs about chickens. 

We surveyed 1,033 Chinese adults and randomly assigned them to either the fish or chicken version of the survey. We then asked them to rate their level of agreement or disagreement with each of the beliefs for their assigned animal. These surveys were written in Simplified Chinese, but results will be presented in English for consistency across reports. The survey instrument can be found in its original language on Open Science Framework. 

We examined two key outcome measures in order to understand how much each belief was associated with important behaviors related to the welfare of each animal: willingness to take a “diet pledge” and support for improved quality of life. For the diet pledge outcome, each participant was asked if they would pledge to reduce their consumption of their assigned animal. For example, participants assigned the fish condition were shown a prompt that read, “In recent years, many people have begun to reduce how much fish they eat, a pattern that is expected to continue. Will you pledge to reduce your own fish consumption?” Those who agreed were then asked to specify the amount they would limit themselves to and to provide a digital signature for their commitment. 

For the support for improvements outcome, each participant was asked if they support improvements to the quality of life of their assigned animal. For example, participants in the chicken condition were shown a prompt that read, “Do you support improving the quality of life of chickens?” Participants were able to respond with “yes” or “no.” Please note that this question differed from the question used in the surveys administered in other countries as a part of this research. Whereas respondents in Brazil, India, Canada, and the U.S. were asked about their willingness to sign a petition to improve living and slaughter conditions on farms, Chinese respondents were asked about their support more generally due to the unlikelihood of a petition being used in the Chinese political context. 

The diet pledge and support questions were presented at the end of the survey, where they saw a prompt reading, “Great, thank you! Before you finish, we have a couple of quick requests for you. You don’t have to agree to either, but please answer each question.” We specified that respondents’ participation incentive did not rely on them committing to the diet pledge or supporting quality of life improvements. The two outcome measures were counterbalanced, meaning that half of the participants saw the diet pledge first and half saw the support question first. 

Throughout this report, we use the plural “fishes” rather than “fish” in order to acknowledge that we are discussing a collection of individuals. Exceptions are made for English translations of survey questions, which use the plural “fish” to reflect its usage by the majority of the English-speaking public. The appropriate Simplified Chinese wording was used for the survey when it was administered. 

All top-line descriptive statistics were calculated using data weighted to match population values for gender, age, race/ethnicity, and region. However, as the differences between the weighted and unweighted data were not large, inferential statistics were calculated using unweighted data to avoid introducing additional sources of variance. Additional information on participant traits can be found in the Supplementary Materials. 

Results

How Many People Took the Pledge and Support Quality of Life Improvements?

Figure 1: Rates of Animal-Positive Behavior

71% of Chinese participants pledged to reduce their consumption of fish and 76% agreed to reduce their consumption of chicken. Among the participants who pledged to reduce their consumption of fish, 8% pledged to never eat fish, 71% pledged to eat it less than once per week, and 20% pledged to eat it only 1-3 times per week. Of chicken pledge-takers, 5% pledged to never eat chicken, 72% pledged to eat it less than once per week, and 19% pledged to eat it only 1-3 times per week. 

97% support improvements to the quality of life of fishes and 98% support improvements to the quality of life of chickens. Because it is already nearly unanimous, we have not included specific recommendations related to increasing the amount of support for quality of life improvements. In general, advocates may benefit from focusing their efforts on shifting other beliefs or by leveraging this existing support to improve conditions. 

The Most Common Chinese Beliefs About Fishes & Chickens

The following figures show all of the beliefs included in the study and the proportion of people who either agreed or disagreed with each, depending on which value was greater. This can give a sense of how common each of the beliefs are, which can be helpful in deciding which beliefs already exist and can be tapped into, and which beliefs need to be encouraged.

Fishes

Figure 2: Beliefs About Fishes

Chickens

Figure 3: Beliefs About Chickens

Which Categories of Beliefs Were Most Strongly Associated with Animal-Positive Behaviors?

Each individual belief is presented in the figures in the next section, in groups of conceptually similar beliefs for each animal. The relative importance of each item within a group of beliefs can be seen for both diet pledges and support for improved quality of life. We also discuss the top-performing individual beliefs across the categories related to the diet pledge. In general, average correlations for the beliefs in each category were small (< .20). In general, beliefs about fishes were more strongly correlated with diet pledges than with support for quality of life improvements. Beliefs about chickens, on the other hand, generally had higher correlations with support for quality of life improvements than with diet pledges.

Table 1: Average Correlations With Pro-Animal Behavior (Overall Rankings)

Notes. Given the ordinal nature of the beliefs scale, Spearman rank-order correlations were used for all belief correlations.

Beliefs About Fishes

Belief categories are presented in order of their average correlation with taking the diet pledge.

Fish Emotions Beliefs

Beliefs about fish emotions had the highest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .16, SD = .02) and the third highest for supporting improved quality of life (r = .05, SD = .05). All three emotional beliefs were associated with taking the diet pledge, led by the belief that fishes can feel positive emotions like pleasure. In other words, those who believe that fishes experience emotions were more likely to take the diet pledge. 

Advocates aiming to reduce fish consumption would likely benefit from emphasizing the emotional nature of fishes regardless of whether the emotion is positive or negative. Support for improving fishes’ quality of life was also associated with the belief that fishes can feel positive emotions.

Figure 4: Fish Emotion Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Fish Personality Beliefs

Beliefs related to fishes’ personalities had the second highest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .15, SD = .10) and the highest with supporting improved quality of life (r = .06, SD = .03). Beliefs that fishes can bond with humans, are curious, and are loving all had notably strong associations with taking the diet pledge. Advocates may see success in diet pledge uptake if they emphasize the positive characteristics of fish personalities. Support for improved quality of life was more common among those who believe that fishes are loving and lower among those who believe that individual fishes don’t have unique characteristics.

Figure 5: Fish Personality Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Fish Social Beliefs

Beliefs about the social nature of fishes had the third highest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .12, SD = .02) and second lowest with supporting improved quality of life (r = .04, SD = .03). People who believe that fishes can communicate with each other were more likely to take the diet pledge, while those who believe that fishes don’t care for their young were less likely to. 

This suggests that people who perceive fishes to have a more social nature may be more willing to reduce their consumption of fish, meaning advocates may find more success by emphasizing this quality. There were no notable associations between social nature and support for improved quality of life. 

Figure 6: Fish Social Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Other Fish Beliefs

“Other” fish beliefs had the fourth highest average correlation with willingness to take the diet pledge (r = .09, SD = .08) and third lowest with supporting improved quality of life (r = .04, SD = .01). People who believe that fishes are easy to raise or that fishes are beautiful were more likely to take the diet pledge. There were no notable associations with supporting improved quality of life. 

Figure 7: Other Fish Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Fish Intelligence Beliefs

Fish intelligence beliefs had the third lowest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .09, SD = .09) and fourth highest with supporting improved quality of life (r = .05, SD = .04). The belief that fishes are more intelligent than people give them credit for had the strongest association with taking the diet pledge. Individuals who believe that fishes can learn were also more likely to take the diet pledge and support improved quality of life. 

These results suggest that rather than comparing their intelligence to that of other animals, advocates may be more successful when showing or discussing fishes’ ability to learn.

Figure 8: Fish Intelligence Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Fish Suffering Beliefs

Beliefs related to the suffering of fishes had the second lowest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .07, SD = .06) and second highest with supporting improved quality of life (r = .05, SD = .02). The belief that fishes need room to explore and exercise had the strongest association with taking the diet pledge. People who believe that fishes can feel pain were also more likely to take the pledge. There were no notable associations with supporting improved quality of life. 

When discussing fish farms, advocates seeking to reduce the consumption of fish may be more successful if they focus on how the conditions of these facilities result in pain for fishes and limit specific natural activities, such as exercise and exploration.

Figure 9: Fish Suffering Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behaviors

Fish Consumption Beliefs

The category with the lowest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .07, SD = .07) and supporting improved quality of life (r = .04, SD = .04) was beliefs about fish consumption. People who believe that fish products labeled “sustainable” come from animals with good welfare were particularly likely to take the diet pledge, while those who believe fishes are the healthiest animal to eat were somewhat less willing to take it. 

The comparatively weak correlations between fish consumption beliefs and diet pledges suggests that advocates may find more success by using other categories, such as fish emotions or personalities, in their messaging. 

Figure 10: Fish Consumption Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behavior

Beliefs about Chickens

Belief categories are presented in order of the size of their average correlation with taking the diet pledge.

Chicken Personality Beliefs

Beliefs related to chickens’ personalities had the highest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .10, SD = .07) and third highest with supporting improved quality of life (r = .10, SD = .03). People who believe that chickens can bond with humans were particularly likely to take the diet pledge. Beliefs that chickens play and are curious were also associated with taking the diet pledge. Because the associations between chicken personality beliefs and diet pledges are higher than many other categories, advocates seeking to reduce chicken consumption in China should consider including discussions of chicken personalities in their messaging. Beliefs that chickens can bond with humans and play were also associated with higher likelihood of supporting improved quality of life. However, those who believe that individual chickens don’t have unique characteristics were less likely to support improved quality of life. 

Figure 11: Chicken Personality Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behavior

Chicken Emotions Beliefs

Beliefs about chickens’ emotions had the second highest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .08, SD = .04) and highest with supporting improved quality of life (r = .13, SD = .03). People who believe that chickens can feel stress or that they can feel positive emotions were more likely to take the pledge. The same is true for supporting improved quality of life, which was most strongly correlated with the belief that chickens can feel negative emotions like fear. 

Figure 12: Chicken Emotion Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behavior

Chicken Intelligence Beliefs

Beliefs related to the intelligence of chickens had the third highest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .07, SD = .08) and fourth highest with supporting improved quality of life (r = .07, SD = .05). The belief that chickens are more intelligent than people give them credit for had the strongest association with taking the pledge. Individuals were also more likely to take the pledge and support quality of life improvements if they believe chickens can learn. For advocates seeking to reduce chicken consumption, emphasizing the intelligent nature of chickens may lead to more success than highlighting several other types of beliefs would. Advocates may also wish to consider doing so without comparing their intelligence to that of other animals. 

Figure 13: Chicken Intelligence Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behavior

Chicken Social Beliefs

Beliefs about the social nature of chickens had the fourth highest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .07, SD = .02) and second highest with supporting quality of life improvements (r = .11, SD = .03). No beliefs were particularly associated with taking the pledge, though individuals who believe chickens can communicate with each other were more likely to support improved quality of life. We suggest that advocates focus on categories of beliefs like chickens’ personalities and emotions rather than their social nature when seeking diet pledges from the Chinese public. 

Figure 14: Chicken Social Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behavior

Other Chicken Beliefs

“Other” beliefs about chickens had the third lowest average correlation with both taking the diet pledge (r = .07, SD = .04) and supporting improved quality of life (r = .06, SD = .02). In particular, people who believe that chickens are beautiful were more likely to take the diet pledge and to support quality of life improvements. Those who believe that chickens are easy to raise were also more likely to take the diet pledge. One possible explanation for this finding is that individuals who are more familiar with chickens may be more likely to hold this belief and to have a greater appreciation for them. 

Figure 15: Other Chicken Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behavior

Chicken Suffering Beliefs

Chicken suffering beliefs had the second lowest average correlation with taking the diet pledge (r = .06, SD = .04) and lowest with supporting improved quality of life (r = .03, SD = .03). Beliefs that chickens need room to explore and exercise or that many chicken farms have horrible conditions were associated with taking the diet pledge. In other words, people who held these beliefs were more likely to take the pledge. People who believe that chickens need room to explore and exercise were also more likely to support improvements to chickens’ quality of life. Advocates may benefit from highlighting these poor conditions and giving concrete examples of the way they may impact a chicken’s natural behavior. 

Figure 16: Chicken Suffering Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behavior

Chicken Consumption Beliefs

The category with the lowest average correlation with taking the diet pledge was beliefs about consuming chickens (r = .05, SD = .02). This category had the second lowest average correlation with support for improved quality of life (r = .04, SD = .02). No beliefs about chicken consumption stood out as particularly associated with taking the pledge or with supporting quality of life improvements. This suggests that advocates looking to reduce the consumption of chicken may be more successful with other appeals, such as those emphasizing chickens’ personalities or their emotions. 

Figure 17: Chicken Consumption Beliefs And Animal-Positive Behavior

What Role Did Participant Traits Play?

Table 2 shows the rates of each pro-animal behavior for demographic groups that showed significant differences using a chi-square test of independence. Trends within ordinal variables were also identified using simple logistic regressions. These characteristics include age, income, education, and frequency of fish and chicken consumption. More detailed results can be found in the Supplementary Materials.

• Gender: Though support was nearly unanimous across our sample, men were slightly less likely than women or other genders to support improvements to chickens’ quality of life.
• Age: Older participants were less likely to take the fish diet pledge than younger participants. 
• Income: Participants with higher incomes were more likely to take the fish diet pledge than those with lower incomes. In general, participants with lower incomes were also less likely to support improvements for both fishes and chickens compared to participants with higher incomes.
• There was no clear relationship between education and pro-animal behaviors. 
• Guardians of companion animals were more likely to take both diet pledges. 
• Participants who had handled chickens recently were likely to take both diet pledges than individuals who had not handled chickens. 
• Recent fish consumption: There was no clear trend between frequency of fish consumption and willingness to take the fish diet pledge.
• Recent chicken consumption: In general, those who ate chicken more frequently were less likely to take the chicken diet pledge than those who ate chicken less frequently. 

As a note, people who already abstained entirely from eating fish or chicken were not offered the diet pledge for that animal.

In addition to the characteristics discussed above, we looked for differences based on whether participants had fished recently. There were no significant differences between groups, which means that the overall percentages should be used for all groups to avoid over-interpretation of non-significant differences. As a reminder, 71% of participants took the diet pledge to reduce their consumption of fish and 76% agreed to reduce their consumption of chicken. 97% of participants expressed support for improvements to the quality of life of fish and 98% support improvements to the quality of life of chickens.

Table 2: Percent Who Took the Diet Pledge or Supported Quality of Life Improvements Based on Group Membership

Notes. An asterisk (*) indicates that there was a statistically significant difference between groups. For details on how these analyses were conducted, see the Supplementary Materials.

Conclusions

This study adds to our body of knowledge regarding public beliefs about chickens and fishes in China and how they relate to animal-positive actions.

Overall, 71% of participants pledged to reduce their consumption of fish, and 76% of participants pledged to reduce their chicken consumption. The majority of pledgers—72% for chickens and 71% for fishes—agreed to reduce their consumption to less than once per week. Still, only 5% of participants who took the chicken pledge and 8% who took the fish pledge agreed to eliminate their consumption entirely. As such, Chinese advocates might consider reducetarian or flexible advocacy approaches to curbing chicken and fish consumption.

We also found nearly unanimous support for quality of life improvements, with 97% support for fishes and 98% for chickens. The ubiquity of participant support for animal welfare improvements suggests that there may be opportunities to leverage widespread pro-animal sentiment. 

Which Beliefs Were Most Common?

The relative prevalence of various beliefs, as summarized in Figures 1 and 2, can serve as useful guides for animal advocates when designing advocacy and awareness campaigns. Animal advocates seeking to reduce animal consumption may want to create campaign messaging that appeals to beliefs that are both widely held and strongly correlated with a willingness to reduce one’s chicken or fish consumption. For instance, campaigns that emphasize the playful nature of chickens and fishes, as well as their need to explore and exercise, may have more success at creating dietary change than campaigns that focus on other messages. Even though these beliefs were among the most widely held in China, many participants did not hold them, indicating that there is still room for further public awareness about such topics.

Beliefs that were less common but still had significant associations with dietary pledges are good candidates for informational campaigns that can lead to further dietary change down the line. For example, around 50% of participants believed that chickens and fishes are capable of learning, and these beliefs were significantly correlated with a willingness to take a diet pledge. Accordingly, advocates may want to incorporate evidence and images that demonstrate the learning capabilities of chickens and fishes.

In general, understanding the prevalence of various beliefs can help advocates target efforts based on where most people currently stand.

Beliefs Most Strongly Associated With Pro-Animal Behavior

Groups of Beliefs

Our calculations of the average correlation of the items in each group of beliefs, as well as the effect sizes displayed in Figures 3-16, can help advocates understand which groups of beliefs are most strongly associated with animal-positive behavior. For both chickens and fishes, beliefs about emotions and personality were more strongly correlated with animal-positive behavior than most other categories of beliefs were. Beliefs about the social nature of fishes also had a notable average correlation with pledge uptake. Conversely, beliefs related to consumption and suffering had the weakest average associations of the different types of beliefs with willingness to take a diet pledge for both animals. 

These results suggest that emphasizing the emotions and personality of chickens and fishes in advocacy may yield more dietary pledges. Advocates may also see similar results if they highlight the social nature of fishes. While some beliefs within these groups were among the most commonly held, many were also less frequent. For this reason, advocates are encouraged to look at the prevalence of individual beliefs to determine whether appealing to these beliefs or focusing on raising public awareness is a more suitable approach.

Beliefs related to the consumption of fishes or chickens were uniformly among the least strongly associated with taking either dietary pledge. In other words, advocates should avoid focusing on these beliefs. A notable exception is the belief that fish products labeled “sustainable” come from fishes with good welfare. Future research should explore this association further to see what actionable insights advocates might be able to gain. 

Because of the nearly unanimous support for improved conditions for chickens and fishes, advocates working in a Chinese context could be more effective by focusing their efforts on other goals, such as reducing animal consumption.

It is important to note that ranking belief groups according to average correlations has its limitations. The individual beliefs within a group of beliefs are not always associated with behavior in the same way or to the same extent. For any beliefs advocates are considering using, we suggest paying closer attention to the strength and direction of correlation for each individual belief than to the average correlation for the overall group.

Individual Beliefs

As discussed above, beliefs about chicken and fish emotions had the strongest average correlations with taking the dietary pledge. The three beliefs with the strongest associations with taking the fish diet pledge were all related to fish personalities: fish can bond with humans, are curious, and are loving. Five out of the six beliefs with the strongest associations with taking the chicken diet pledge were also personality beliefs: chickens can bond with humans, play, are curious, are loving, and—somewhat counterintuitively—are aggressive. The other top belief in terms of correlation strength was that chickens are more intelligent than people give them credit. The belief that fish are more intelligent than they are given credit for was also among the beliefs most strongly associated with taking the fish pledge. Advocates interested in reducing animal consumption might consider using images of chickens or fishes playing with one another, exploring, or caring for their peers as ways of appealing to these beliefs.

Believing that fish can feel positive emotions and that they can feel negative emotions both have notable associations with taking the fish diet pledge. Believing that chickens experience positive emotions is also associated with a higher willingness to take the diet pledge. However, the same is not true of the belief that chickens experience negative emotions, despite the association between believing that chickens can feel stress and taking the diet pledge. In other words, advocates interested in highlighting the rich emotional lives of chickens should focus on their positive emotions, such as pleasure, or the stress that they feel rather than negative emotions more broadly. By contrast, fish advocates may see more willingness to take a diet pledge by emphasizing either positive or negative emotions. 

Although the average correlations of beliefs about suffering were not as strongly related to taking the diet pledge as other types of beliefs, a number of individual suffering beliefs had significant correlations with taking the pledge. For example, believing that chickens and fishes need room to explore had one of the strongest associations with taking the dietary pledge, and the belief that fishes can feel pain also had exhibited a significant association with committing to reduce one’s fish consumption. We also note that the belief about chickens and fishes’ need for space were also among the most common for both animals, making it a strong candidate to be one of the primary beliefs advocacy campaigns against intensive animal farming in China could appeal to.

The beauty of chickens and fishes also stood out among individual beliefs for their significant correlations with taking the diet pledges. Some research has shown that emotional reactions—like the feeling someone could get from seeing a particularly beautiful animal—can have an effect on judgments and decision-making (Angie et al., 2011). Contrasting the beauty of chickens and fishes with the harsh realities on industrial farms could be an effective strategy for encouraging pro-animal behavior. For instance, advocates could compare images of wild rainbow trout with those raised on farms or caught in nets. 

Participant Characteristics

This study also allowed us to examine differences in willingness to commit to diet pledges or express support for improved quality of life, as summarized in Table 2. These insights can help advocates understand which social groups to target to increase the number of individuals taking animal-positive action.

Because age was associated with a decreased willingness to take the fish diet pledge, advocates seeking to reduce fish consumption may have more success when targeting younger individuals. Participants with higher incomes were more likely to take the fish diet pledge and to express support for improved quality of life for both chickens and fishes. As a result, advocates working in a Chinese context may wish to consider income-related barriers to reduced consumption of animal products. 

Participants who live with companion animals were over 20 percentage points more likely to take the chicken diet pledge and over 30 percentage points more likely to take the fish diet pledge compared to those without companion animals.

Participants who frequently eat chicken products were less likely to take the chicken diet pledge, but those who eat fish products frequently were no less likely to take the fish pledge than those who eat them less often. In other words, advocates interested in reducing fish consumption do not need to focus on current eating habits, but those focused on reducing chicken consumption may have more success with people for whom chicken is already only a small part of their diet. 

Future Directions

Although this research provides some useful guidelines for chicken and fish welfare advocacy, more research is required to understand whether these beliefs are a cause of animal-positive behaviors, or whether they are merely associated with them. In a continuation of this line of research, we will also be testing interventions that will attempt to use some of the beliefs that appear most important based on this research to understand whether shifting these beliefs can increase animal-positive behaviors. This will take the form of an experiment (randomized controlled trial), where different groups of people are shown an intervention that targets specific beliefs to see if any of them influence animal-positive behaviors.

Supplementary Materials

Method: Additional Details

Participants and Power

Participants were recruited using a panel company called CINT. In keeping with Faunalytics’ Data Quality Assurance Plan, we performed data checks to screen out answers that may be fraudulent or participants who fail attention checks.

Responses that showed poor data quality or the failure of attention-check questions were excluded. After removing participants in the data cleaning process, we had a total of 510 participants in the fish condition and 523 in the chicken condition. Power analyses indicated that a sample size of 497 per animal would allow for the detection of a small-to-medium effect size (rho = .16) with a power of .95 in a point-biserial correlation (critical t = 1.96), so we were well-powered for our goals. For additional details on the measures, power analysis, analysis plan, and more, please see the pre-registration documents on the Open Science Framework.

Table 3: Participants Traits

Correlational Analyses

Spearman rank-order correlations were used for analyses because the outcome variables were dichotomous and beliefs were rated on a Likert scale. They can be interpreted the same way as standard Pearson correlations. The scores range from -1 to 1, with scores further away from zero indicating a stronger relationship between the variables in question. It is also an indication of effect size.

Participant Traits Analyses

For our analysis of participant traits, all of which were categorical, we used chi-square tests of independence to test for differences across levels of each trait category. For ordinal variables, we used simple logistic regressions to determine trends.

When conducting chi-square tests on tables with cells containing expected values below 5, Monte Carlo simulations were necessarily used to compute p-values.

Table 4: Summarized Chi-Square Results

Table 5: Summarized Logistic Regression Results

Average Correlation by Group of Beliefs

The average correlation for each group of beliefs are shown in Table 6 for fishes and Table 7 for chickens. These were also provided in text in the body of the report.

To get these numbers, we averaged the absolute value of each of the correlations for the items in a group for each of the outcome variables. Because the number of responses used for each correlation was approximately the same, this “average of averages” approach does not weight any correlation unduly. 

Table 6: Average Correlation of Fish Beliefs by Category

Table 7: Average Correlation of Chicken Beliefs by Category

As noted in the Results section, beliefs around the emotions and personalities of fishes were the categories most strongly associated with diet pledges. Personality beliefs had the strongest association with support for quality of life improvements, but all of the categories of beliefs were similarly associated with this outcome measure.

For chickens, the personality group of beliefs was most strongly associated with pledges, while the emotion and social groups of beliefs were most strongly associated with support for improvements to quality of life.

Individual Beliefs

Table 8 and Table 9 below contain the correlation results for all individual beliefs. By default, the beliefs with the strongest average association with the two outcome variables are at the top of the table. The “Mean” column contains a zero-centered average of the 7-point Likert scale used for each belief.

Table 8: Individual Fish Beliefs

Notes. An asterisk (*) indicates a statistically significant correlation. 

Table 9: Individual Chicken Beliefs