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Animals and Social Welfare

Author

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  • Romain Espinosa

    (CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, CIRED - Centre International de Recherche sur l'Environnement et le Développement - Cirad - Centre de Coopération Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Développement - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AgroParisTech - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - Université Paris-Saclay - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

Abstract

I propose a framework to evaluate the social gains from policies regarding animals. The model considers both the welfare of animals and humans. The gains in animal welfare are estimated by considering the violations of the animals' fundamental freedoms weighted for each species. I apply this framework to twenty policy proposals targeting wild, domestic, farmed, and laboratory animals. Although the policies benefit from widespread popular support in France (the annual willingnesses-to-pay range between 15 and 39 Euros per person per year), I show that they have very heterogeneous impacts on animal welfare (valued at between 0.013 and 3,618 Euros per person per year). I further show that humans' willingness-to-pay for policies improving animal welfare is a poor predictor of the effective impact on animal welfare of these policies. I conclude that it is essential to value animal welfare per se in cost-benefit analyses in order to determine the set of welfare-increasing policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Romain Espinosa, 2024. "Animals and Social Welfare," Post-Print halshs-04369311, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-04369311
    DOI: 10.1007/s00355-023-01495-x
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://shs.hal.science/halshs-04369311v1
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Keywords

    Social welfare; animals; animal welfare; human welfare; public policies; utility potentials; willingness-to-pay; contingent valuation methods;
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