Speciesism, Altruism And The Economics Of Animal Welfare
In this study, economists have tried to incorporate altruism and non utilitarian concerns into a cost-benefit analysis of farm animal welfare policies. They found that most people are unwilling to spend money for the improved welfare of animals. One-third of subjects were unwilling to pay any money to improve animal welfare, and of those who would pay, few would pay more than $3 to improve the lives of 1,000 animals. However, a small minority was willing to pay large sums of money, making $57 the average amount that US adults will pay to improve the lives of 1,000 farm animals.
Article Abstract:
“Economists have long relied on utilitarian principles in carrying out cost–benefit analysis, but such utilitarianism is typically limited to the well-being of humans. Some prominent philosophers have argued such an approach is unjustifiably speciesist, but what are the consequences of including animal well-being in cost–benefit analysis? This paper considers this question in the context of human altruism towards animals in which people’s concerns for the well-being of animals create an externality. After uncovering some conceptual challenges involved in carrying out cost–benefit analysis on animal welfare policies, we report the results of a novel experiment used to measure the public-good value of farm animal welfare, and show that although the average value in our sample is quite large, the result is due to the preferences of only a small subset of the subjects.”