The Open Philanthropy Project awarded a grant of $79,100 to the Animal Welfare Action Lab (AWAL) via the Reducetarian Foundation to support a multi-wave study analyzing the impact of meat-reduction and elimination messaging on self-reported animal product consumption. This grant falls within Open Philanthropy’s work on farm animal welfare.
AWAL is a nonprofit research organization that aims to help animal advocates be more effective. The funded study will replicate and improve upon an earlier multi-wave study by AWAL, which found that participants who read a persuasive news article about the rise of people eating less meat later self-reported eating less meat compared to the control group.{footnote_1} Open Philanthropy’s Program Officer for Farm Animal Welfare, Lewis Bollard, considers the research team for this project strong and is excited to see several methodology improvements upon the original study, including: a more representative sample through the use of YouGov, a larger sample size (N=4,000 compared to N=2,685 in the original), and the potential to fund a third-wave component analyzing whether any effect endures after two months. The funds for this grant will primarily cover costs associated with the use of YouGov.
Update: In July 2018, Open Philanthropy added $20,550 to the original award amount. The amounts above have been updated to reflect this.