We have some data on public support for WAW interventions of different kinds from our recent Attitudes Towards Wild Animal Welfare Scale paper. The academic paper itself does not highlight the results that would be most interesting to EAs in this context, so I’ll reproduce them below, and also link to this more accessible summary on the Faunalytics website. (credit to @Willem Sleegers who was the first author of both).
We asked respondents about their level of support for different specific interventions. All the interventions tested had a plurality of support except for genetically modifying wild animals.[2] Helping wild animals in natural disasters, vaccinating and healing sick wild animals, and supplying food, water and shelter, all had large majorities in support. Note that the survey sample was not weighted to be representative (as the goal of the studies was to validate the measures not to assess public opinion), but I would not expect this to change the basic pattern of the results.
Oppose
Neither
Support
Helping wild animals in fires and natural disasters
0.8%
3.7%
95.5%
Vaccinating and healing sick wild animals
6.7%
10.5%
82.7%
Providing for the basic needs of wild animals (e.g., supplying food and water, creating shelters)
9.5%
11.5%
79.1%
Conducting research into how to alter nature to improve the lives of wild animals
26.5%
19.1%
54.3%
Controlling the fertility of wild animals to manage their population size
33.9%
23.8%
42.3%
Genetically modifying wild animals to improve their welfare or the welfare of other wild animals
70.3%
16.2%
13.5%
Of course, some might claim that the popular interventions are not characteristic of WAW or are too small scale (though I do not think this is true of vaccinations). But I think it is notable than even research into “how to alter nature” has majority support, and fertility control has plurality support.
We also asked, more abstractly, about whether people endorse the attitudes that intervening to help wild animals is infeasible (what we call ’intervention ineffectiveness), with these items:
Ecosystems are too complex to predict the outcomes of efforts aimed at improving the lives of wild animals.
Nothing much can be done to reduce the hardships that affect animals living in the wild.
It is not possible to reliably improve the lives of wild animals.
It is not possible to solve the problems that wild animals face in nature.
With the caveat that this measure was not designed for polling absolute levels of public support, but rather than reliably capturing a specific underlying attitude, on average respondents did not strongly endorse this attitudes, and slightly leaned towards disagreement.
Stepping back, I would not take a very strong stance on the FAW vs WAW normality/popularity question. I think this is very likely to vary at the level of individual intervention, or depend on framing when presented abstractly. As an example of the latter point, when we presented FAW and WAW as abstract cause areas, each with a ‘moderate’ and ‘controversial’ framing, WAW was competitive with a moderate framing (non-significantly ahead of Climate Change as well), while it lagged when presented with a framing that mentioned genetic engineering. We’d be happy to gather further evidence to examine a wider variety of framings or interventions.
Though this was a secondary aspect of the paper. The core aim of the paper was to develop and validate a new set of measures towards wild animal welfare, and these questions about support for different interventions were intended only to validate those measures.
i think this kind of data is important and interesting, but my point was something a bit different. Only by trying to enact some of this stuff will we really find out the extent of resistance and backlash.
We have some data on public support for WAW interventions of different kinds from our recent Attitudes Towards Wild Animal Welfare Scale paper. The academic paper itself does not highlight the results that would be most interesting to EAs in this context, so I’ll reproduce them below, and also link to this more accessible summary on the Faunalytics website. (credit to @Willem Sleegers who was the first author of both).
We asked respondents about their level of support for different specific interventions. All the interventions tested had a plurality of support except for genetically modifying wild animals.[2] Helping wild animals in natural disasters, vaccinating and healing sick wild animals, and supplying food, water and shelter, all had large majorities in support. Note that the survey sample was not weighted to be representative (as the goal of the studies was to validate the measures not to assess public opinion), but I would not expect this to change the basic pattern of the results.
Of course, some might claim that the popular interventions are not characteristic of WAW or are too small scale (though I do not think this is true of vaccinations). But I think it is notable than even research into “how to alter nature” has majority support, and fertility control has plurality support.
We also asked, more abstractly, about whether people endorse the attitudes that intervening to help wild animals is infeasible (what we call ’intervention ineffectiveness), with these items:
Ecosystems are too complex to predict the outcomes of efforts aimed at improving the lives of wild animals.
Nothing much can be done to reduce the hardships that affect animals living in the wild.
It is not possible to reliably improve the lives of wild animals.
It is not possible to solve the problems that wild animals face in nature.
With the caveat that this measure was not designed for polling absolute levels of public support, but rather than reliably capturing a specific underlying attitude, on average respondents did not strongly endorse this attitudes, and slightly leaned towards disagreement.
Stepping back, I would not take a very strong stance on the FAW vs WAW normality/popularity question. I think this is very likely to vary at the level of individual intervention, or depend on framing when presented abstractly. As an example of the latter point, when we presented FAW and WAW as abstract cause areas, each with a ‘moderate’ and ‘controversial’ framing, WAW was competitive with a moderate framing (non-significantly ahead of Climate Change as well), while it lagged when presented with a framing that mentioned genetic engineering. We’d be happy to gather further evidence to examine a wider variety of framings or interventions.
Though this was a secondary aspect of the paper. The core aim of the paper was to develop and validate a new set of measures towards wild animal welfare, and these questions about support for different interventions were intended only to validate those measures.
Which is, perhaps, not surprising, many people oppose GM tout court.
i think this kind of data is important and interesting, but my point was something a bit different. Only by trying to enact some of this stuff will we really find out the extent of resistance and backlash.