Thanks so much for this post. Very impressive how quickly you put this together.
I think your analysis is a very helpful take on how cost-effective it might be for advocates to purchaseshrimp stunners for industry, and how this might compare to estimates of the cost-effectiveness of historical corporate hen welfare campaigns. Very useful to try and make different interventions comparable for interested stakeholders.
That said, I think your quantitive analysis probably misses most of the expected value of the SWP’s shrimp stunning intervention. My guess is that the vast majority of the expected value of this opportunity lies in how much it might bring forward widespread adoption of shrimp stunning by industry, and not the easier-to-quantify short-term direct impacts of the stunners SWP purchases for industry.
I think you recognise this issue in the last paragraph. And I also fully appreciate that even a relatively shallow attempt at quantifying wide-spread industry adoption scenarios was probably beyond the amount of time you could dedicate to this post.
That said, I’m not sure this limitation comes through fully in your summary, even after you the updates you added to the top. My biggest concern is that your report might put off potential donors who might assume your assessment more comprehensively covers benefits than it does, and might not have time to fully engage with your methodology or reach the final paragraph.
If you agree with my assessment, share my concerns, and were open to making changes while fundraising is ongoing, my suggestions would be to be more explicit about the scope limitations of your analysis and how most of the expected value might not be quantified (either by amending the summary or adding an additional update at the top). When describing the factors that might drive donor decisions, I’d personally also add optimism/pessimism about the potential for this project to bring forward widespread adoption by industry, which I see as independent of the factors you’ve already listed.
If you don’t agree with my assessment about where expected value might come from (e.g. because you think donors purchasing stunners for industry might set a dangerous precedent that might in fact delay adoption), or just happen to be deeply uncertain, I think it would be great for you to articulate this more explicitly.
Hope you don’t mind me making these suggestions. Really great work again—thank you for putting the time and effort into it.
Thanks for your comment! I broadly agree with the point you’re making, and have amended the summary to capture it. Let me know if you think the updated wording addresses your concern.
I did ponder trying to quantify the potential impacts of catalyzing industry-wide change as a result of this pilot, and I just want to lay out a little bit of why I think that’s so hard. It’s very tempting to compute a massive EV for this by doing a calculation like (small chance that this brings industry-wide adoption forward n years) * (400 billion shrimp farmed/year) = giant number. But I think that’s probably a bad way to look at it. I think the better way to think of it is that industry-wide adoption would take a successful pilot plus other forms of activism like corporate campaigns, ballot initiatives, or legislative lobbying. So the pilot alone isn’t necessarily bringing forward broader adoption, but rather creating new potentially cost-effective opportunities for donations. The exact EV would therefore depend on questions like the relative cost-effectiveness of those new donation opportunities compared to the existing animal welfare portfolio, and on how funding constrained the animal welfare space is expected to be over the next several years.
None of this is to say that I disagree with your point, just that I’m quite uncertain about the indirect cost effectiveness and would struggle to find a way to easily model it.
I think the edits you made to the summary work very well in making it clear what the quantitative analysis does and doesn’t cover! Thank you for taking on board my comments so promptly.
Fully agree with your points on the difficulty of quantifying the indirect benefits, and also how/where those benefits should be attributed.
I think the challenge is that excluding indirect benefits from a quantitative analysis effectively assigns them a zero value. That is ok when indirect benefits are most likely only a small fraction of the direct benefits. But it becomes problematic when the indirect benefits could plausibly be several times (or orders of magnitude) larger than the direct ones and relevant to decision-making.
If judgements about the size of the indirect benefits might be important, think it is valuable to make the exclusions clear—as you’ve now done!
Thanks again for the time you put into the piece, and the clear write-up / reasoning transparency!
Thanks so much for this post. Very impressive how quickly you put this together.
I think your analysis is a very helpful take on how cost-effective it might be for advocates to purchase shrimp stunners for industry, and how this might compare to estimates of the cost-effectiveness of historical corporate hen welfare campaigns. Very useful to try and make different interventions comparable for interested stakeholders.
That said, I think your quantitive analysis probably misses most of the expected value of the SWP’s shrimp stunning intervention. My guess is that the vast majority of the expected value of this opportunity lies in how much it might bring forward widespread adoption of shrimp stunning by industry, and not the easier-to-quantify short-term direct impacts of the stunners SWP purchases for industry.
I think you recognise this issue in the last paragraph. And I also fully appreciate that even a relatively shallow attempt at quantifying wide-spread industry adoption scenarios was probably beyond the amount of time you could dedicate to this post.
That said, I’m not sure this limitation comes through fully in your summary, even after you the updates you added to the top. My biggest concern is that your report might put off potential donors who might assume your assessment more comprehensively covers benefits than it does, and might not have time to fully engage with your methodology or reach the final paragraph.
If you agree with my assessment, share my concerns, and were open to making changes while fundraising is ongoing, my suggestions would be to be more explicit about the scope limitations of your analysis and how most of the expected value might not be quantified (either by amending the summary or adding an additional update at the top). When describing the factors that might drive donor decisions, I’d personally also add optimism/pessimism about the potential for this project to bring forward widespread adoption by industry, which I see as independent of the factors you’ve already listed.
If you don’t agree with my assessment about where expected value might come from (e.g. because you think donors purchasing stunners for industry might set a dangerous precedent that might in fact delay adoption), or just happen to be deeply uncertain, I think it would be great for you to articulate this more explicitly.
Hope you don’t mind me making these suggestions. Really great work again—thank you for putting the time and effort into it.
Thanks for your comment! I broadly agree with the point you’re making, and have amended the summary to capture it. Let me know if you think the updated wording addresses your concern.
I did ponder trying to quantify the potential impacts of catalyzing industry-wide change as a result of this pilot, and I just want to lay out a little bit of why I think that’s so hard. It’s very tempting to compute a massive EV for this by doing a calculation like (small chance that this brings industry-wide adoption forward n years) * (400 billion shrimp farmed/year) = giant number. But I think that’s probably a bad way to look at it. I think the better way to think of it is that industry-wide adoption would take a successful pilot plus other forms of activism like corporate campaigns, ballot initiatives, or legislative lobbying. So the pilot alone isn’t necessarily bringing forward broader adoption, but rather creating new potentially cost-effective opportunities for donations. The exact EV would therefore depend on questions like the relative cost-effectiveness of those new donation opportunities compared to the existing animal welfare portfolio, and on how funding constrained the animal welfare space is expected to be over the next several years.
None of this is to say that I disagree with your point, just that I’m quite uncertain about the indirect cost effectiveness and would struggle to find a way to easily model it.
I think the edits you made to the summary work very well in making it clear what the quantitative analysis does and doesn’t cover! Thank you for taking on board my comments so promptly.
Fully agree with your points on the difficulty of quantifying the indirect benefits, and also how/where those benefits should be attributed.
I think the challenge is that excluding indirect benefits from a quantitative analysis effectively assigns them a zero value. That is ok when indirect benefits are most likely only a small fraction of the direct benefits. But it becomes problematic when the indirect benefits could plausibly be several times (or orders of magnitude) larger than the direct ones and relevant to decision-making.
If judgements about the size of the indirect benefits might be important, think it is valuable to make the exclusions clear—as you’ve now done!
Thanks again for the time you put into the piece, and the clear write-up / reasoning transparency!