Espinosa, Romain and Treich, Nicolas (2025) Fairness judgments about animals. The Journal of Economic Inequality, Vol. 23. pp. 809-834.

Abstract

In this paper, we empirically investigate fairness judgments about animals. We design a survey that addresses major challenges associated with the inclusion of animal welfare in public decisions. Collecting data from a representative sample of the French population (N=1,526), we document the views of citizens on the issue. Key findings reveal strong support for directly valuing animal welfare in public decisions, with a significant support for an at least equal consideration relative to human welfare. Most people deem that policy making should take into account both animal welfare and humans’ altruistic concerns about it. The vast majority supports equal consideration across different animal species (cow vs. chicken) and contexts (captive vs. wild animals). Importantly, the observed associations of fairness judgments are not consistent with the repugnant conclusion or procreation asymmetry at the aggregate level, two important concepts in population ethics. The strong support for the direct valuation of animal welfare conflicts with the dominant anthropocentric frameworks used in policy evaluations. We investigate social heterogeneity in fairness judgments with multiverse analyses (> 97,000 specifications). Our results stress the importance of developing sentientist economic frameworks for more informed and ethical policymaking.