Thanks for the comment, @PreciousPig! I strongly upvoted it. I am tagging you because my initial comment only included the 2 sentences before this one.
Dear Team of Veganuary,
I am tagging @Toni Vernelli such that Veganuary’s team knows about your comment (only the author of the post is notified of new comments by default).
I think there are some incredibly promising metrics about Veganuary’s success, for examnple this 2019 survey on why people go Vegan in which 12800 people participated, out of them 369 (a little under 3%) said that Veganuary was the first thing that seriously made them consider going Vegan.
“369 people [2.88 % (= 369⁄12,814) of the vegans surveyed] succesfully took part in Veganuary [being vegan for 1 month]”. It does not follow that Veganuary caused these people to become vegan. Moreover, even if everyone who successfully took part in Veganuary became permanently vegan, they could have become so a little later anyway without Veganuary.
Nitpick. I wonder whether you are using “for example” to present your strongest argument for Veganuary being cost-effective. If yes, I think “crucially” would convey your views more faithfully than “for example”.
If we assume this metric is accurate and still holds true today, and that roughly 1% of the people in Europe and North America are Vegan (or very roughly 10 milllion people out of 1 billion people), as many as 280 000 people might be Vegan today because of Veganuary. If we further assume each Vegan person saves on average one animal’s live a day, that would be 100 000 000 (100 million) animals spared each year due to Veganuary.
The survey you linked to looked into 0.128 % (= 12.8*10^3/(10*10^6)) as many vegans as those you estimated exist in Europe and North America. So here is room for huge selection bias. The number of people successfully participating in Veganuary as a fraction of the number of vegans could be as low as 3.69*10^-5 (= 0.00128*0.0288) even if the data from the survey was 100 % reliable (athough highly selected).
Besides continuing to share the number of Email signups, here are some ways how I think you could increase / confirm the accuracy of the YouGov survey:
I would ask questions like these to random (representative) samples of the general population in the target countries:
How much more or less poultry meat would you have consumed in January without Veganuary?
How much more or less poultry meat would you have consumed in January without Plantuary?
The possible answers could be like these:
I consumed 100 % less poultry meat (I did not consume poultry meat).
I consumed 80 % less poultry meat.
...
I consumed roughly the same poultry meat.
I consumed 20 % more poultry meat.
...
I consumed 100 % more poultry meat (I doubled my consumption of poultry meat).
I more than doubled my consumption of poultry meat.
I would have similar questions for eggs, fish, and seafood besides fish. My suggested questions:
Focus on the animal-based products linked to the vast majority of animal suffering. They do not ask about whether people participated in Veganuary because what ultimately matters is whether they reduced their consumption of animal-based foods.
Include control questions about Plantuary, which sounds similar to Veganuary, but does not exist. The effect of Veganuary should be measured relative to that of the control campaign. I expect people will report reducing their consumption of animal-based products because of Plantuary, in the same way that 4 % of Americans report believing lizardmen are running the Earth.
Have continuous answers which offer more information. I am wary of questions which can only be answered as yes or no. Social desirability bias will prompt people to report decreasing the consumption of animal-based foods even if the decrease was negligible.
Thanks for the comment, @PreciousPig! I strongly upvoted it. I am tagging you because my initial comment only included the 2 sentences before this one.
I am tagging @Toni Vernelli such that Veganuary’s team knows about your comment (only the author of the post is notified of new comments by default).
“369 people [2.88 % (= 369⁄12,814) of the vegans surveyed] succesfully took part in Veganuary [being vegan for 1 month]”. It does not follow that Veganuary caused these people to become vegan. Moreover, even if everyone who successfully took part in Veganuary became permanently vegan, they could have become so a little later anyway without Veganuary.
Nitpick. I wonder whether you are using “for example” to present your strongest argument for Veganuary being cost-effective. If yes, I think “crucially” would convey your views more faithfully than “for example”.
The survey you linked to looked into 0.128 % (= 12.8*10^3/(10*10^6)) as many vegans as those you estimated exist in Europe and North America. So here is room for huge selection bias. The number of people successfully participating in Veganuary as a fraction of the number of vegans could be as low as 3.69*10^-5 (= 0.00128*0.0288) even if the data from the survey was 100 % reliable (athough highly selected).
I would ask questions like these to random (representative) samples of the general population in the target countries:
How much more or less poultry meat would you have consumed in January without Veganuary?
How much more or less poultry meat would you have consumed in January without Plantuary?
The possible answers could be like these:
I consumed 100 % less poultry meat (I did not consume poultry meat).
I consumed 80 % less poultry meat.
...
I consumed roughly the same poultry meat.
I consumed 20 % more poultry meat.
...
I consumed 100 % more poultry meat (I doubled my consumption of poultry meat).
I more than doubled my consumption of poultry meat.
I would have similar questions for eggs, fish, and seafood besides fish. My suggested questions:
Focus on the animal-based products linked to the vast majority of animal suffering. They do not ask about whether people participated in Veganuary because what ultimately matters is whether they reduced their consumption of animal-based foods.
Include control questions about Plantuary, which sounds similar to Veganuary, but does not exist. The effect of Veganuary should be measured relative to that of the control campaign. I expect people will report reducing their consumption of animal-based products because of Plantuary, in the same way that 4 % of Americans report believing lizardmen are running the Earth.
Have continuous answers which offer more information. I am wary of questions which can only be answered as yes or no. Social desirability bias will prompt people to report decreasing the consumption of animal-based foods even if the decrease was negligible.
I think it would be great if Veganuary partnered with Faunalytics or the Humane and Sustainable Food Lab to run a rigorous survey.