Gift Giving And Companion Animals
The animal protection movement has long warned that animals do not make good gifts for Christmas. However, new research from the ASPCA and others adds a new level of complexity to the issue of whether we should advise the public that gifting animals over the holidays is beneficial for the animals or whether it puts them at risk.
Guest blog
Giving gifts during the holidays is not as simple an act as we may think. For economists, surprise gifts are inefficient because of the deadweight loss,[1] i.e. the difference between the amount of money that the gift giver spends, and the money that the receiver would have been willing to spend. For anthropologists and sociologists, gift giving is surrounded by deep meanings and has the power to define relations among people.[2] For psychologists, there are many things that can go wrong when giving a gift, for instance, the mismatch between the expectations of the giver about the level of appreciation for the gift and the actual emotional response of the receiver.[3] If we take into account that holiday sales (November and December) accounted for 19.2% of the total sales in 2012, which corresponded to $580 billion,[4] gift giving has to be taken seriously.
But money is not the only aspect to consider when giving a gift. The “what” or, even more importantly, the “who” we are giving or receiving must also be factored in. Around the holidays, many animal advocacy organizations warn the public about how inappropriate it is to give animals as gifts. According to those organizations, the animal is very likely to end up abandoned. Yet research shows a different picture. The findings from a study conducted this year by researchers at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) showed that 78% of cats and dogs received as gifts were still living at the original home, while 12% had died and 10% were rehomed.[5] The survey also explored involvement in the selection of the companion animal, attachment, and duration of guardianship.[6] The authors of this study concluded that whether the animal was a gift was not related to the self-perceived love or attachment that guardians had toward the animal, and that companions given as gifts were not at higher risk for abandonment.[7] The ASPCA’s study coincides with the results of research conducted in 1997 by New et al., which found that dogs who were given as gifts were at a lower risk of relinquishment compared with those coming from a shelter, friend, pet shop, or who were brought in as strays.[8]
Taken together, the results of these studies are both good and bad news. The good news is that giving an animal as a gift might not be as bad as once imagined. The bad news, however, is that adoption from a shelter (and other avenues) might be a risk factor of relinquishment for dogs and cats. This is troubling considering the need to find homes for the thousands of animals already in shelters. More research is needed in order to identify protective factors for keeping adopted shelter animals in their new home, whether they are gifts or not. Meanwhile, we cannot deny that regardless of how they come into their new home that companion animals play a very important and healthy role in our lives.[9]
1. Waldfogel J. (1993) The deadweight loss of Christmas. American Economic Review, 83: 1328–1336.↩
2. Camerer C (1988). Gifts as Economic Signals and Social Symbols. The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 94, Supplement: Organizations and Institutions: Sociological and Economic Approaches to the Analysis of Social Structure, S180-S214.↩
3. Flynn FJ, Adams GS. (2009) Money can’t buy love: Asymmetric beliefs about gift price and feelings of appreciation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45: 404–409.↩
4. National Retail Federation Foundation (2013) Retail Insight Center. Available: http://research.nrffoundation.com/Default.aspx?pg=55#.UrNbbvRDvZk. Accessed: Dec. 19, 2013.↩
5. Weiss E, Dolan ED, Garrison L, Hong J, Slater M. (2013) Should Dogs and Cats be Given as Gifts? Animals, 3: 995-1001. Available: http://www.mdpi.com/2076-2615/3/4/995. ↩
6. Ibid.↩
7. Ibid.↩
8. New JC Jr, Salman MD, King M, Scarlett JM, Kass PH, Hutchison JM. (2000) Characteristics of Shelter-Relinquished Animals and Their Owners Compared with Animals and their Owners in U.S. Pet-Owning Households. Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science, 3, 179–201. Available: http://petpopulation.org/characteristicsofshelter.pdf .↩
9. Walsh F. (2009) Human-Animal Bonds I: The Relational Significance of Companion Animals. Family Process, 48: 462–480. doi: 10.1111/j.1545-5300.2009.01296.↩