Research In Progress | Completed Projects | Potential Projects | Legacy Projects | Prioritization
These are the main projects currently underway at Faunalytics.
Trends in Veganism and Vegetarianism: A New Annual Survey
To accurately understand how plant-based eating is changing and growing in popularity, we need to measure it repeatedly, precisely, accurately, and comparably. Faunalytics is undertaking to do just that.
As our readers undoubtedly know, there are many estimates of vegan and vegetarian prevalence in the United States and abroad. Some are precise: their sample sizes are large enough to provide small margins of error. Some are repeated over many years. Some are accurate, with well-designed questions and the strongest sampling methods. A few have the same wording and sampling method, making them comparable to one another. But none are all of these things, and this is a huge hindrance to our ability to interpret and compare their results.
Faunalytics has received a commitment from the Greenbaum Foundation to support this measurement on an annual basis. We are grateful to them for their generous support! Data collection will begin in the United States in 2020, with a probable expansion to other countries in subsequent years. As always, the study design will be pre-registered on the Open Science Framework.
Identifying High-Impact Animal Product Formats
Using publicly available NHANES data, Faunalytics will estimate which forms of animal products are most heavily consumed for food in the United States in order to identify the impact of each type of food on animal lives. For instance, how does the daily consumption of chicken drumsticks compare to chicken nuggets? Beef burgers to steaks? The goal is to provide an ordered list of the products with the greatest potential impact if meat-eaters replaced them with excellent plant-based or cultivated substitutes.
Cultural Barriers and Supports to the Reduction of Animal Product Consumption in China
When considering animal suffering from a global perspective, it is clear that current resources are disproportionately allocated to Western countries, yet production and consumption are on the rise elsewhere. The majority of farmed animals live and suffer in low- and middle-income countries.
In partnership and consultation with local animal advocacy groups, we will conduct foundational research in China. The goal is to learn about the barriers and supports for specific advocacy methods before testing them experimentally, because the movement does not currently have enough information to design a successful experiment. Effective research–just like effective advocacy–will require a sensitive understanding of the cultural associations and traditions around meat, dairy, and egg consumption in the country of interest.
This study will be pre-registered on the Open Science Framework once design is complete.
Reducing Fish & Chicken Suffering: Harmful Beliefs 
Small-Bodied Animal Research Program
Small-Bodied Animal Research Program
Larger farmed animals like cows and pigs often get the most attention, due in part to their role in climate change. However, when animals are consumed for food, those with small bodies (fish and chickens) are killed in greater numbers to produce the same amount of flesh. Our first study in this line of research will investigate the frequency and implications of beliefs held by the general population with respect to these animals (e.g., “chickens are not smart”, “fish don’t feel pain”). This study is the first step, after which we will undertake experimental investigations to target the most impactful and tractable barriers.
This study will be pre-registered on the Open Science Framework once design is complete.
Longitudinal Study of Veg*n Retention
Four years ago, Faunalytics conducted ground-breaking research showing that there are far more former vegetarians and vegans than current ones. Thanks to generous funding from VegFund and the Animal Advocacy Research Fund, we are now conducting a longitudinal study looking at how new veg*ns transition to and maintain their new diets in the crucial early months. In partnership with Carleton University (Ottawa, ON, Canada), we recently launched a six-month longitudinal study looking at which habits, tools, and resources help people stick with the diet over time, so that advocacy groups can target their messages effectively and retain as many as possible.
This study is pre-registered on the Open Science Framework.
Why We Retain Some Advocates and Lose Others
As an organization focused on capacity-building, Faunalytics is intensely interested in the question of why some advocates lapse after a few months or years and others stay engaged with the movement long-term. This question is complex and multi-faceted, but very important. Some of the factors we are considering for inclusion in the survey are emotional burnout, social support, feelings of making a meaningful contribution, and perceptions of conflict within the movement.
This study is pre-registered on the Open Science Framework.
Twitter Trends: #CageFree, #Vegan, #AnimalRights, and More!
Since February 2019, Faunalytics has been collecting data from Twitter for tweets that include keywords related to plant-based diets, cultured meat, animal welfare and intensive agriculture, effective animal advocacy, and other topics. Once we have a full year of data, we intend to examine trends over time and make this dataset publicly available.
