Valuing Animals Is What Really Motivates Us To Donate
With the ever-increasing interest in animal welfare, emerging animal charities seem to grow by the day. The World Animal Network reports that now there are over 20,000 official animal protection organizations across more than 100 countries. The number of animal charities in Australia, for instance, grew faster in the mid-2000s than the overall non-profit sector. Most animal protection organizations rely on individual donations, a revenue stream still smaller than those allocated to other causes, and many animal charities must invest a lot of time into fundraising, with varying degrees of success. As is the case in all charitable causes, animal advocates also need to identify and target new supporters while retaining existing donors.
As a result, some researchers are trying to understand how altruistic behavior can be accurately predicted. Most such research to date has focused on sociodemographic and psychographic factors such as age, gender, education, number of children, income and subjective financial situation, church membership, altruistic motivations, religiosity, and attitudes toward animals. All of the aforementioned factors except for religiosity and education have been shown to be positively correlated with giving, with women, in general, being statistically more generous. However, some have raised concerns about the cross-applicability of such broad studies – apparently, some individual differences do not predict giving to animal charities all too well. What’s more, most of the aforementioned research has surveyed people from the U.S. and Europe, and it isn’t clear if the same predictors can be used in other regions.
Recent research suggests that values, instead of individual differences, may provide a more universally true representation of why some people choose to give to animal charities. Values are trans-situational, motivational goals that reflect what is important to us throughout our lives. Value priorities have been related to a wide range of beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors, including activism, segmented spending, and donations to charitable causes. In this study, a group of researchers from the Centre for Human and Cultural Values at the University of Western Australia set out to check whether valuing animals is a good and geographically universal predictor. Value-aligned outreach is, after all, suggested to be more effective across countries than others such as guilt or fear-based appeals.
Adults from nine countries (Australia, Canada, China, Italy, Malaysia, Netherlands, Poland, Singapore, and the U.S.) were recruited and paid a standard fee for completing a 20-min online survey. In total, 3,717 adults filled the survey, with around 400 respondents from each country. The survey specified that animal charities included organizations addressing animal rights, welfare and services, and wildlife conservation.
As expected, the researchers found significant positive correlations between the “animal” value and neighboring “nature” and “concern” values. The distinction between the former two typically lies within the motivation to protect all animals vs. the motivation to preserve biological collectives and species, which may be indifferent to the suffering of individuals. There was a significant positive association between donating to animal charities and the animals value in all nine countries – showcasing unprecedented predictive capacity. More specifically, the U.S. had the highest animal value score on average, with a third of respondents claiming that animals should be afforded the same protections as people. On the other hand, the Chinese cohort reported the lowest score. There, two-thirds had not even heard of the term “animal welfare.” The cross-cultural differences found in this study may reflect another important finding – it might be a good reflection of the relative maturity or ubiquity of animal protection organizations in a given country.
As suspected, demographic differences were not as good predictors across the board. Age was found to be positively related to donating to animal charities in two countries and negatively in one, while financial stress was negatively associated in five countries, and religiosity and having dependent children -negatively associated in one country. The researchers urge for further research to systematically examine the interplay between “animal” and “nature” values, and who gives to which kind of animal charities, be it shelters, wildlife conservation, or animal rights advocacy groups. Another aspect that remains understudied is how such predictors correspond with the type of support offered – for instance, do high animal value scoring respondents become regular, committed donors? How much and how frequently do they donate, and why did they choose the particular animal charity that they support?
This work has confirmed that the animal value aligned with universalism (as per the Theory of Basic Human Values) is a reliable predictor for donating to animal charities, one that is applicable in many countries. Furthermore, animal NGOs will also be happy to learn that the objectively quantifiable trait could be used to gauge the maturity of the animal protection space in a specific country. Both aspects will surely aid fundraising and expansion targeting efforts for many effective animal advocacy-aligned charities worldwide.