General Animal Protection

This study focuses on consumers' expectations for American companies and how their perceptions can influence purchasing, employment, and investment decisions. The results show that corporate responsibility has a significant impact on consumer purchase decisions, as well as employee loyalty.

In this essay, Austrian animal advocate Martin Balluch argues that reform-based and abolition-based animal advocacy are inextricably linked in a "welfare-rights continuum" that makes it very difficult to achieve meaningful change through public education and persuasion. Instead, Balluch argues, widespread change for animals will only come through altering the system itself, by changing the balance of power and codifying animal-friendly laws and policies. [Note: Balluch welcomes comments and feedback on his essay at vgt@vgt.at]

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) recently announced a $1 million prize to the "first person to come up with a method to produce commercially viable quantities of in vitro meat at competitive prices by 2012." However, the prize has come under fire from some for being a publicity stunt and only loosely based on science.

By adopting strategic performance measures, nonprofits can bring focus and discipline to their mission and much-needed information to donors and supporting organizations. The result: a more efficient marketplace that rewards effectiveness, thereby bringing bigger benefits to society. And in the post-Enron era, the stewardship and accountability that the Balanced Scorecard can help nonprofits achieve is just as relevant to the private sector as it is to the public sector. [Excerpted from article]

This paper shows how sustainable consumption patterns can spread within a population via processes of social learning even though a strong individual learning bias may favor environmentally harmful products. We present a model depicting how the biased transmission of different behaviors via individual and social learning influences agents’ consumption behavior. The underlying learning biases can be traced back to evolved cognitive dispositions. Challenging the vision of a permanent transition toward sustainability, we argue that “green” consumption patterns are not self-reinforcing and cannot be “locked in” permanently. [Excerpted from report]

According to this research, U.S. consumers have reduced shopping frequency in an effort to combine errands because of rising gas prices and other economic pressures. This trend has implications for where people do their food shopping.

Shelter statistics show that 13.5 million dogs and cats were euthanized in shelters in 1973, compared with 3-4 million in 2007. Tax and financial data on individual nonprofits and state population totals were used to calculate a per-capita donation figure, used here as benchmarks to assess the level of support for animal protection in each state.