*Nick Cooney is the Founder and Director of The Humane League 

[Effective Animal Activism’s]( http://www.effectiveanimalactivism.org/Top-

charities) top recommended charity – and the Compassionate Communitites

Manager at Farm Sanctuary. He’s also the author of [Change of Heart]( http://

www.veganoutreach.org/advocacy/cooneyontitles.html), which is about how we

can use an understanding of psychology to make social advocacy more effective

(we recommend it!).

*As a member of 80,000 Hours,

we asked him to share his thoughts on how to use an 80,000 Hours approach to

approach causes more effectively.

Note that Nick’s views do not represent those of Farm Sanctuary

The Problem

For-profit companies (including the meat, egg, and dairy industries) spend countless

dollars each year on market research to figure out the best ways to persuade

the public to consume their products. Vegetarian advocacy organizations have

until recently spent virtually nothing to determine the best ways to persuade the

public, despite the fact that their entire success as a movement depends on getting

individual members of the public to change their dietary behavior. Until things

began to change this past year, there had been virtually no research on the impact of

various programs (i.e., no formal comparing of veg advocacy programs against one

another to determine which are most cost-effective), and also no component testing

of specific aspects of a program (for example, does video A or video B persuade

more people to go vegetarian?).

Additionally, while there is a body of useful academic research on vegetarians,

it remains cloistered in unread journals where it is of no use to advocates or

advocacy organizations. Furthermore, many studies provide information that

is only marginally useful to animal advocates. The curiosities of academic

researchers usually do not line up with the pragmatic needs of vegetarian

advocacy organizations. (I should note here that I’ve authored a [book]( http://

www.amazon.com/Change-Heart-Psychology-Spreading-Social/dp/159056233X)

that analyzes the body of research that has already conducted, and distills its useful

lessons for veg advocates.)

Thankfully, the tide is now starting to change. In just the past year at least three

organizations in the United States  The Humane League, Farm Sanctuary, and the

Farm Animal Rights Movement (FARM)  have begun evaluating some or all of their veg advocacy programs and approaches for comparative cost-effectiveness. And the

Humane Research Council has been commissioned by several organizations to test

the relative effectiveness of different veg advocacy videos, why many vegetarians go

back to eating meat, and other things. But there is much more work to be done.

Why Research Is So Important

Research on vegetarian advocacy (and on vegetarians themselves) is important

because animals’ lives are important. Knowing that video A creates more dietary

change than video B, or pamphlet A creates more dietary change than pamphlet

B, can make an organization’s veg advocacy work more effective. To use just one

example, millions of dollars are currently spent on veg video and leaflet distribution.

Identifying the most effective leaflet and video, and/or improving its effectiveness

by even 10%, would spare hundreds of thousands of additional animals a lifetime of

misery.

And such comparisons, as well as general program measurement, need not be

expensive or time consuming. I recently oversaw a Humane League/Farm Sanctuary

joint study that examined (for the first time) the dietary change impact of leafleting

a college campus, and that also carried out an A/B split test on the effectiveness

of two different leaflets. The entire study cost nothing other than a week of staff

time and a few days of volunteer time to enter and crunch the data. And it yielded

incredibly useful results that have altered decisions at both organizations and that

will help spare the lives of many, many animals.

More broadly, research on the impact of vegetarian advocacy programs forces

organizations to realize that certain programs are dramatically more effective

than others. Hopefully that will guide future spending and prioritization, just as it

most certainly would for any for-profit business. How many animals are helped per

dollar of expenditure through an undercover investigation? What about through a

media campaign? What about through in-person lectures? Research can answers

these questions and help the vegetarian movement become much more efficient at

sparing lives. Research on vegetarians themselves can help organizations target key

demographics that are likely to switch more effectively, use messages that are more

likely to inspire dietary change, and so forth.

Why Is Vegetarian Research Only Now Starting to Catch On?

If you were to ask any vegetarian advocacy organization “Would you like your

program to become 10, 20, 30% more effective with just a small amount of

extra work?” you’d expect them to jump for joy. But we humans are creatures of

incredible habit, and it’s so hard for us to do something we have not done before.

We assume we know what works and what doesn’t, based on anecdotal evidence, instinct, and so forth. We always want to put what money we have towards

programming itself (an understandable desire). We feel pressed for time and loathe

to take on something new when we don’t know (from experience) that the results

will be useful. We don’t know where we would begin with research, or exactly what

questions it could answer for us. Probably the biggest factor of all is that it just isn’t

on our radar. We haven’t done it before, we don’t know of many other people doing

it, so the thought has barely crossed our mind. Thankfully, that is all changing now,

at least in the United States. Precedent has now been set, with a growing number of

the top vegetarian advocacy organizations beginning to carry out research that is

guiding budgetary decisions and helping improve their cost-effectiveness.

How Can You Help?

If you work for a vegetarian advocacy organization, especially one with paid staff

and financial resources, carry out research to the extent possible. It’s not hard to

learn how to carry out meaningful, valid research, and you can always seek guidance

from the Humane Research Council or from other

organizations that have already done similar research. (Or from me, I’d love to help!

Just drop me a line at [email protected] .)

Most importantly, compare the programs you are running to see how cost-effective

each one is so that you may shape future budgets accordingly. All of us would agree

that the right thing to do for animals is spend money on the program(s) that will

help the most animals. So hopefully we will all agree that it’s imperative for us to

take the time to find out which is which! Secondly, consider what researchable

answers would enable you to make your most effective programs even more

effective.

If you are a student or professor interested in carrying out research to help the

vegetarian advocacy movement, speak to a top vegetarian advocacy organization

and ask them what would be most useful to them. Sadly, there are many more-or-

less useless dissertations and studies that well-meaning (and probably vegetarian)

students and professors put an incredible amount of work into to answer a question

that they theorize would enable veg advocates to do a much better job, but which

ends up being of little practical value. The most pressing and most useful research is

likely to be identified by organizations themselves, and it is often simple research on

what approaches and programs create more dietary change per dollar.

And again, if you are interested in or considering carrying out any sort of research,

I’d love to chat with you! You can reach me at [email protected]

Here’s to the important and growing trend in the vegetarian advocacy movement of

turning to research to improve our effectiveness and save more animals!