Research In Progress | Completed Projects | Upcoming Projects | Legacy Projects | Prioritization
These are the main projects currently underway at Faunalytics. Pre-registrations for most projects that have reached the data collection phase can be found on Faunalytics’ Open Science Framework page.
State-by-State Reactions to Potential Legislative Changes
One of the biggest hurdles to getting lawmakers to support or propose welfare legislation is their fear of negative public reaction and its impact on their own political careers. This study will use representative polls in key states and districts to gauge public support for a range of legislative policies dealing primarily with farmed and wild animal welfare. Identifying the regions and issues to target will be done in close collaboration with stakeholders who do this type of work.
This study is made possible by generous funding from the Food Systems Research Fund and an anonymous donor.
Reduction Targets by Demographic
When it comes to consumers’ engagement with animal protection, there is no one-size-fits-all approach: using a plant-based protein once could be extreme to one person while the one next to them is willing to go vegan and phone their senator about upcoming farmed animal legislation. This study aims to find the best balance of request size versus tractability (the number of people willing to take an action) across a wide range of demographic groups. U.S. participants will indicate their likelihood of taking a range of pro-animal actions that span diet, political actions, and purchases. With the results, we will create a web-based application that models the results in a way that easily enables advocates to compare segments of each country’s populations and identify the optimal ask for each one, minimizing the tradeoff between impact of the change and willingness to try it.
This project is made possible thanks to generous funding from the Culture & Animals Foundation, the Centre for Effective Altruism, and an anonymous donor.
Benchmarking Salaries In The Farmed Animal Protection Movement
In our 2020 study, The State Of Animal Advocacy In The U.S. & Canada: Experiences & Turnover, Faunalytics found that dissatisfaction with pay and benefits was also among the top reasons advocates had left past advocacy roles—and this was particularly true for advocates from minoritized groups. Salary transparency and benchmarking are important tools for a fair and equitable movement, but are currently lacking. We will undertake a survey of U.S. farmed animal movement staff about their salary and benefits. This will support employees by providing equal information to everyone and highlighting any potential inequities that employers should address. It will support employers as well, by providing the data they need to provide competitive offers and retain talent with fair compensation and benefits. Finally, it will provide reliable, norm-based data to funders who support or want to better understand the full cost of organizational operating expenses.
This study is made possible by generous funding from an anonymous donor.
Identifying Collaborative Opportunities With Climate Change And Environmental Organizations
This study will start with desk research and analysis of the following questions: Considering regions of high priority for animal advocates (e.g., the U.S., countries within Latin America, Asia, Africa), what are the key goals of climate/environmental groups in each? Where and how do they overlap with animal advocates’ goals? We will then consider how these key issues relate to animal advocates’ goals of reducing animal suffering and conduct a deeper review, interviews, and analysis in one or two regions that seem particularly conducive to collaboration. We strive to understand environmentalists’ perspectives on potential opportunities for and challenges of collaborating with animal advocates, as well as their interest in doing so, with an ultimate goal of identifying partnership opportunities.This study is made possible by generous funding from an anonymous donor.
An International Study Of Advocates’ Strategies & Needs
In partnership with the Pollination Project, we seek to understand the reasons that animal protection groups in different regions and circumstances choose particular approaches to advocacy and what resources they would need in order to expand their efforts. In this project, spearheaded by the Good Growth Co., we will conduct mixed qualitative/quantitative research about international advocacy groups’ experiences, opinions, and needs. The primary goal is to support international advocacy efforts by creating a set of recommendations for funders, researchers, and other groups seeking funding.
Chicken and Fish Substitution Meta-Analysis
Substitution of one animal product for another is always an undesirable outcome for reduction campaigns, but poses a particular problem when a smaller-bodied animal is substituted for a larger one, because of the larger impact in animal lives. For this research, being conducted in collaboration with Dr. Maya Mathur and Rethink Priorities, we will conduct a meta-analysis (an analysis of previously published data) to examine whether there is evidence of a substitution effect across many intervention studies. More specifically–although we will look for substitution across all products–we are most interested in whether the consumption of fish and chicken products increases when the consumption of cow and pig products decrease. If there is evidence of substitution effects, we will also use the available evidence to suggest characteristics of interventions that caused it, and suggest how advocates may be able to avoid them in their campaigns.
This project is made possible thanks to generous funding from the Centre for Effective Altruism and an anonymous donor.
Estimating Social Spread of Advocacy
As animal advocacy efforts expand in developing countries without a strong grassroots history, it is crucial that we measure and attend to the impact of both top-down and bottom-up efforts. This study, in which we will conduct a review of the literature on social network analysis and social contagion theory (about how behavior spreads from person to person) will serve as a first step toward realistic impact measurement for grassroots campaigns. Based on this literature review on studies that parallel veg*n diets, we will produce a hypothesis about the amount of behavior spread (to friends and friends of friends) that veg*n advocates might reasonably expect.
This project is made possible thanks to donations from Faunalytics supporters like you.
