Giving to Animal Charities: A Nine-Country Study

ABSTRACT

Growing public concern for the welfare of animals is reflected in an increase in the number of animal charities around the world. However, little is known about the individuals who donate to these organizations. In this study, we examine relations between individual differences in personal values and sociodemographic characteristics and the decision to donate to animal charities. We do this in samples from nine different countries: the USA, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, Italy, Poland, Malaysia, Singapore, and China. We show that the personal value expressing concern for the welfare of animals is empirically distinct from other refined values and that this value is positively associated with giving to animal charities in each country. These results extend recent attempts to identify and validate the animals value as a distinct value beyond western samples. Using logistic regression analysis, we also show, in all nine country samples, that the animals value is the most consistent predictor of donating to animal charities when compared with sociodemographic characteristics examined in previous studies. The results of this study can be used by organizations in the animal protection sector to inform their donor segmentation and targeting strategies both within and across borders.

KEYWORDS:

• Animal charities
• donating
• human–animal interaction
• human values
• logistic regression

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 The goodness-of-fit index in the binary logistic regression is the Nagelkerke R². While this measure is scaled in the same way as the R² in OLS regression (i.e., 0–1) the two measures are not the same. Nagelkerke R² is a useful statistic for evaluating competing models but is not necessarily a measure of variance explained (see Hosmer & Lemeshow, 2000). With this in mind, we use the expression “variance explained” when referring to Nagelkerke R².

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council Discovery grant program [grant Number DP110104152].