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 £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.