Are some animals more equal than others?

Abstract

Public concern for animals has increased substantially over recent years, making animal welfare charities a popular choice for donors. Despite this growing attention, we know very little about what motivates donations towards animal organisations. In two pre-registered studies, I employ randomised experiments on a UK sample to examine attitudes towards overhead and cost-effectiveness of charities saving human lives (Study 1) and animal lives (Study 2). In Study 1, donors found it easier to evaluate overhead over cost-effectiveness when evaluating human charities in isolation. When evaluated jointly, donors based their judgement on cost-effectiveness. In Study 2, the same phenomenon was observed with marginal significance. Further analysis showed that when evaluating charities in isolation, donors value saving a human life significantly more than an animal life by 拢16.26. Hierarchical regression analysis reveals that this difference is robust against political beliefs, religiosity, speciesism, and personal characteristics. Results carry implications for charity evaluators.