Direct Versus Indirect Questioning: An Application to the Well-Being of Farm Animals

Byline: Jayson L. Lusk (1), F. Bailey Norwood (1) Keywords: Animal welfare; Indirect questioning; Social desirability bias Abstract: Recent events suggest people are increasingly concerned not just with their own well-being but that of animals as well. However, there is little systematic evidence on people's willingness-to-trade their own well-being and quality of life for improvements in the well-being of farm animals. In this paper, we utilize a straightforward and unobtrusive technique to mitigate socially desirability effects and gage the publics' opinion about farm animal welfare: indirect questioning. In survey of United States households, we find sharp differences between direct and indirect questions related to farm animal welfare. For example, whereas only 15.6% of the public said they think low meat prices are more important than the well-being of farm animals, 67.5% said the average American thinks low meat prices are more important than the well-being of farm animals. This finding, coupled with the extant literature on indirect questioning, suggests that people's concerns for farm animal welfare are actually much lower than what they say they are. Author Affiliation: (1) Department of Agricultural Economics, Oklahoma State University, 411 Ag Hall, Stillwater, OK, 74078, USA Article History: Registration Date: 14/05/2009 Received Date: 20/02/2009 Accepted Date: 12/05/2009 Online Date: 26/05/2009