Do you have any sense of whether or not the invertebrate welfare pieces have had an impact on organizations, decision makers, etc? It seems like it would be reasonable to expect them to translate to more donations for groups working on invertebrate issues, since I’d guess the evidence for valenced experience was stronger than many would have expected. Though in the EA space that would basically mean donating to you all or Wild Animal Initiative. Those pieces were great, and I hope they lead to more interest in invertebrates in the animal welfare community.
Thanks for the question and thanks for the compliment about our work! As to the impact of the work, from our Impact survey:
Invertebrate sentience was the second most common (13) piece of work that changed beliefs. Also the second largest number of changed actions of all our work (alongside EA survey) including 1 donation influenced, 1 research inspiration, and 4 unspecified actions.
Informally, I could add many people (probably >10) in the animal welfare space have personally told me they think our work on invertebrates changed their opinion about invertebrate sentience (though there is, of course, a chance these people were overemphasizing the work to me). A couple of academics have also privately told us they thought our work was worthwhile and useful to them. These people largely aren’t donors though and I doubt many of them have started to give to invertebrate charities.
That said, I think the impact of this project in particular is difficult to judge. The diffuse impact of possibly introducing or normalizing discussion of this topic is difficult to capture in surveys, particularly when the answers are largely anonymous, and the payoffs even if people have been convinced to take them seriously may not occur until there is an actionable intervention to possibly support.
That’s great to hear! I guess I think it would be great for norms of caring about invertebrates to be spread in the animal advocacy space, so that seems good.
Do you have any sense of whether or not the invertebrate welfare pieces have had an impact on organizations, decision makers, etc? It seems like it would be reasonable to expect them to translate to more donations for groups working on invertebrate issues, since I’d guess the evidence for valenced experience was stronger than many would have expected. Though in the EA space that would basically mean donating to you all or Wild Animal Initiative. Those pieces were great, and I hope they lead to more interest in invertebrates in the animal welfare community.
Thanks for the question and thanks for the compliment about our work! As to the impact of the work, from our Impact survey:
Invertebrate sentience was the second most common (13) piece of work that changed beliefs. Also the second largest number of changed actions of all our work (alongside EA survey) including 1 donation influenced, 1 research inspiration, and 4 unspecified actions.
Informally, I could add many people (probably >10) in the animal welfare space have personally told me they think our work on invertebrates changed their opinion about invertebrate sentience (though there is, of course, a chance these people were overemphasizing the work to me). A couple of academics have also privately told us they thought our work was worthwhile and useful to them. These people largely aren’t donors though and I doubt many of them have started to give to invertebrate charities.
That said, I think the impact of this project in particular is difficult to judge. The diffuse impact of possibly introducing or normalizing discussion of this topic is difficult to capture in surveys, particularly when the answers are largely anonymous, and the payoffs even if people have been convinced to take them seriously may not occur until there is an actionable intervention to possibly support.
That’s great to hear! I guess I think it would be great for norms of caring about invertebrates to be spread in the animal advocacy space, so that seems good.