Better for Animals: The Evidence Behind Popular Initiatives

Table of Contents

15 minute read

Better for Animals: Background

Animal Charity Evaluators’ Better for Animals: Evidence-Based Insights for Effective Animal Advocacy resource is an ongoing project in which we distill key research on different animal advocacy interventions to help us evaluate their impact in different contexts. We have made this research publicly available to support informed decision-making about how to help the most animals. You may read more about the methodology in our recent announcement.

This is a living document and we want to make it as helpful, accessible, and up-to-date as possible, so please feel free to reach out with feedback! To keep up to date with ACE’s research and the work of the impactful organizations that we support, be sure to sign up for our mailing list.

To help make this information more accessible to a wide range of audiences, we are spotlighting one intervention each month through a series of social media and blog posts. This month we are focusing on the evidence around Popular Initiatives.

Intervention Spotlight #9: Popular Initiatives

What is this intervention?

This category includes ballot initiatives, propositions, referendums, and other citizen-led efforts aimed at changing laws and policies affecting animals. These initiatives serve as tools for law and policy advocacy, with some considerations overlapping with the Government Outreach intervention. However, they are treated separately here due to their distinct theories of change. This intervention encompasses both direct democracy mechanisms, where the electorate directly votes on a policy without needing the involvement of elected representatives (for example, U.S. city and state level ballot initiatives), and indirect democracy mechanisms, where a petition meeting specific requirements can compel a legal process to address a proposed measure (for example, the E.U. European Citizens’ Initiatives).

What is our overall assessment of this intervention? How confident are we in this assessment?

Citizen-led initiatives can drive significant legal changes that improve animal welfare at scale, especially by leveraging the voter-buyer gap, whereby public support for animal welfare often exceeds consumer willingness to pay more for higher-welfare products¹. However, the effectiveness of these initiatives is highly context-dependent, hinging on political stability, legal structures, enforcement capacity, and the presence of well-funded counter-lobbies. While these campaigns can mobilize public support and shift norms, they are costly, complex, and vulnerable to backlash or dilution through legal and political resistance. Overall, the research suggests they offer high potential impact but high dependency on favorable conditions. Whether an initiative is likely to succeed can be estimated to some degree beforehand.
The strength of evidence for this area is moderate, with a mix of empirical case studies, survey data, and cost-effectiveness analyses, though few are rigorous or generalizable across contexts. Much of the evidence is context-specific or reliant on expert opinion, limiting confidence in broad conclusions.
We think that citizen-led initiatives are a highly context-dependent intervention, with mixed promise. Evidence on their impact is mixed, they often entail high resource demands, and they can carry risks of legal or political backlash. However, in jurisdictions with enabling legal frameworks, strong public support, and the potential for global positive spillover effects, these initiatives may offer high-leverage opportunities and deserve targeted exploration.
We believe this intervention is likely stronger when:
- It takes place in jurisdictions with strong citizen-led tools, such as binding popular initiatives or ballot measures that allow direct legislative change.
- Stable democratic systems and influential markets (for example, the EU or California) create opportunities for spillover effects and stronger enforcement.
- The ask is simple, inspiring, and easy for the public to understand and support.
- Well-resourced organizers can hire professional lobbyists and run sustained outreach to political parties whose endorsements influence voters.
- Campaigns benefit from: strong public support before the campaign; strong media backing; buy-in from some political and media elites and coalitions with allied advocacy, environmental, or health groups.

- Conversely, the intervention is likely weaker when:
  - Citizen-led mechanisms are absent or weak, or only allow non-binding agenda-setting initiatives.
  - Political instability, frequent government turnover, or well-funded counter-lobbies obstruct or overturn measures even after a successful vote.
  - Enforcement is inadequate, allowing low-welfare imports or poor inspection rates to undercut new standards.
  - Ballot measures trigger industry consolidation, shifting costs onto small farmers and entrenching large corporate producers.

Voters rely heavily on party endorsements, requiring costly lobbying and risking partisan backlash or rule changes that restrict future initiatives.

Our confidence in this assessment is moderate. While findings are broadly consistent in showing that campaigns can succeed under certain conditions, the limited evidence and lack of replication across methods and contexts make it difficult to judge how widely these results apply. Public opinion findings (e.g. the voter-consumer gap) show consistent cross-national support for stronger animal welfare measures, but these should be interpreted cautiously: stated support may be inflated by social desirability bias, and attitudes reported in surveys often do not translate into real-world voting behavior.
Due to the high potential of this class of interventions under the right conditions, future research could be particularly valuable. We think future research should prioritize investigating the conditions under which citizen-led initiatives are most cost-effective, including comparative case studies across jurisdictions, assessments of enforcement mechanisms, and analysis of long-term positive spillover effects. Research into the risks of backlash and the dynamics of coalition-building would also help clarify when these interventions are most strategically advantageous.

What does the research say about how effective this intervention is?

Governments have implemented numerous pieces of legislation, policies, and regulations that benefit animals. These include directly banning or regulating cruel practices in animal farming, and implementing measures that influence the consumption of animal products — for example, through taxation, subsidies, and labeling of animal-derived food products.² Even indirect government intervention — for example, regulation of antibiotic use on farms and environmental policy — can have both positive and negative effects on animal welfare. Due to the scale of government control, even relatively small legislative changes can impact millions, or billions of animals. ³ ,⁴

Studies across many countries have found strong public support for stronger animal welfare legislation, even where this sentiment does not bear out through purchasing habits.⁵ This phenomenon, known as the voter-consumer gap, can be leveraged by advocates wanting to reduce the total suffering of animals without having to influence individual consumer behaviors.⁶
- This phenomenon was covered in further detail in Pax Fauna’s review which found that in the majority of the American public, disgust can be elicited towards modern farming practices, which can open them to persuasion⁷, and a 2018 study in Germany which found that more people would vote for higher animal welfare, even if it meant a 60% price increase, than would be willing to pay just 10% more on an individual basis.⁸
An analysis of survey data across 23 countries found higher support for animal welfare tends to be linked with stronger animal welfare legislation, which may reflect governments responding to citizens’ preferences.⁹
However, some findings raise concerns about whether surveys overstate the public’s true support for animal welfare. For example, the Sentience Institute’s 2021 survey of U.S. adults found unexpectedly high support for radical policies, with 49.1% favoring a ban on slaughterhouses, 52.7% favoring a ban on factory farming, and 38.8% favoring a ban on all animal farming. These numbers could reflect genuine attitudes, but they might also be inflated by misunderstandings of the questions or by respondents giving socially desirable answers rather than expressing their true views.¹⁰ Likewise, a study by Rethink Priorities revealed that when respondents were asked to explain their reasoning, support for a slaughterhouse ban dropped from 20.4% to between 7.9% and 15.7%, suggesting that initial abstract support figures may overstate true public backing for radical reforms.¹¹
Even if an initiative is not successful in achieving its aim of legislative reform, many experts have reported secondary benefits of running this type of campaign, including mobilization, networking, and membership growth.¹² However, this is not always the case. Following the loss of the 2024 Denver ballot initiative, Pro-Animal Future found mixed outcomes. While they mobilized a huge number of citizens to campaign for the measure, they believe that —– beyond a small core of highly engaged individuals —– they would need to rebuild this grassroots volunteer base from scratch for any future campaign in the city.¹³
Proponents of ballot initiatives often refer to a “fail-forward” approach, referencing the many progressive movements that had to run multiple ballots on the same issue before winning the change they hoped to see. Some widely cited examples include U.S. women’s suffrage and marriage equality.¹⁴

Cost effectiveness

For a given campaign, the cost effectiveness of this intervention also depends on the change in policy or legislation being called for, with some legislative demands potentially leading to more suffering than the status quo.¹⁵ An example of this can be the meat tax, which if implemented on red meat products, is likely to lead to an increase in the consumption of chickens. An assessment of the change in policy/legislation that takes into account the country context, flow-through effects, and tractability is required to determine how cost effective citizen initiatives are likely to be in each case.¹⁶

One cost-effectiveness analysis across four U.S. ballot initiatives found “0.10 years of suffering avoided per dollar spent on all four ballot initiatives, with a 90-percentile range from 0.05 years per dollar to 0.14 years per dollar”, with improving the conditions of egg-laying hens being the most impactful policy ask.¹⁷

Strength of evidence

The general strength of evidence for citizen-led initiatives is moderate, with a few empirical case studies, some cost-effectiveness modeling, and a reliance on survey data and expert opinion. Key limitations include the lack of generalizability across jurisdictions, the small number of rigorous, peer-reviewed studies, and a limited evidence base on long-term impacts or positive spillover effects. Major research gaps include:

The effectiveness of citizen-led initiatives in non-Western contexts
Mechanisms of enforcement following successful initiatives
Backfire effects and counter-lobby responses
How citizens actually vote on these ballots — including the role of party endorsements and the reliability of surveys of voter intentions
The comparative cost-effectiveness of citizen-led initiatives versus direct legislative lobbying or other interventions

Under what conditions is this intervention more or less effective?

Note: Many of these are identical to those listed in the Government Outreach section, due to the heavy overlap between the two.

The impact of this intervention is limited by the relative political power of the citizen-led tool in question. A relatively small number of jurisdictions¹⁸ have legal instruments which allow citizens to directly change legislation. An example is Switzerland, which was the first country to ban battery cages for egg-laying hens in 1992; this followed a successful popular initiative proposing the ban in 1978.¹⁹
A larger number of jurisdictions run agenda-setting popular initiatives²⁰, which require the legislature to consider the proposal; however, they are not obligated to approve it. The End the Cage Age European Citizens’ Initiative (ECI) was the only ECI to be accepted by the European Commission in 2021.²¹ However, five years on, the Commission has yet to deliver on its commitment for legislative change.

When selecting a measure for a citizen-led initiative, expert advice is that the ask should be simple to explain and conceptualize by the general public —– as opposed to more complex technical changes that might cause confusion.

Favorable conditions

Experts report that countries with stable political environments and democratic systems offer better conditions for legislative advocacy.
Jurisdictions that are influential on the world stage can create positive spillover effects. For example, through the Brussels Effect of E.U. regulation influencing other countries’ legislation²², or by enforcing standards on trading partners through policies like Proposition 12 applied welfare standards not only to the farms in California, but to all products processed and sold in California.²³
Strong public and media support for animal welfare policies can enhance the effectiveness of campaigns. A 2011 study found that political advertising for and against Proposition 2 in California led to voter polarization, ultimately favoring the initiative.²⁴
Sentience Institute’s 2020 Our Animals, Food and Technology survey “found that lower age, leftward politics, and a vegetarian/vegan diet were associated with greater animal farming opposition (AFO) and animal product alternative support (APAS)”.²⁵ While there aren’t any quality studies on demographics and voting behavior on animal welfare ballots and support for other popular initiatives, it seems reasonable to extrapolate high animal farming opposition to voting behavior.
Effective enforcement of animal welfare laws is needed for the success of legislative changes. The Enforcement Problem report found that, in the UK, less than 3% of farms are inspected over a three-year period by public bodies.²⁶ When assessing legislative changes, advocates must consider how the improvements will be enforced as this may present tractability issues.
Advocacy groups with resources can hire public affairs agencies, professional lobbyists with existing connections, increasing their chances of success.
Forming coalitions with other advocacy groups, environmental organizations, and public health groups can strengthen the push for legislative changes.

Less favorable conditions

Even when citizens are successful in changing legislation, they may still face legal challenges, as legislators may have the power to amend or block the proposal, and other actors may attempt to amend or block the measure through the courts. Proposition 12, a successful ballot initiative in California, was taken all the way to the Supreme Court as the U.S. pork industry attempted to overturn it.²⁷ In early 2026, Proposition 12 is threatened again through the “Save Our Bacon” Act, which passed through the U.S. House of Representatives as a part of the larger Farm Bill and if passed through the senate could stop any state or locality from regulating the sale of meat based on how it’s produced in another state. This would likely invalidate state and local bans on foie gras, crated veal, and more.²⁸
The presence of a well-funded and organized counter-lobby, as evidenced by the obstructions to revisions of EU animal welfare legislation by farming lobbies,²⁹ ,³⁰ can significantly hinder advocacy efforts. The counter-lobby spends significantly more money lobbying than animal advocates.³¹
Political instability and changes in government can disrupt or reverse progress made by advocacy efforts.
Advocacy efforts can sometimes create a backlash, strengthening the opposing camp and undermining the intended legislative changes.³²
Ballot initiatives may inadvertently accelerate industry consolidation by imposing compliance costs that disproportionately burden independent farmers, strengthening the market share of vertically integrated corporations and potentially entrenching industrial agriculture over the long term.³³

Mixed conditions

Prioritizing welfare asks already adopted by some corporations can be beneficial, as these companies may push for broader adoption to level the playing field.
A more mixed result was found between consumer and citizen attitudes towards farmed animals in China. In comparison to a more significant consumer-voter gap in similar studies in the Global North, the gap in attitudes between both roles was significantly narrower.³⁴ Therefore, it is not clear that the same voter-consumer phenomenon is present in this country.
As with corporate welfare campaigns, there is a risk that improving — or being perceived as improving —– the conditions for farmed animals may make consumers complacent, and even increase their total consumption of animal products.³⁵ However, a 2010 paper on the market demand effects of Proposition 2 found an increase in purchases of cage-free and organic eggs and a reduction in caged eggs in the San Francisco and Oakland area in the lead-up to the ballot.³⁶ The total expenditure on eggs either remained constant or slightly increased, but the total number of eggs consumed likely fell, as the average cost of cage-free and organic eggs is higher than that of caged eggs.

Lobbying can be very expensive and is not always successful, often requiring years of sustained funding and effort. In the previous section, we discussed the need for a stable political system, but even under such a system, governments are voted in and out of power, upending the progress gained through years of relationship building.
Where citizen-led initiatives (such as ballot initiatives or petitions) succeed in passing legislation that elected officials oppose, those officials may respond by tightening the rules that govern future initiatives, making the mechanism harder for citizens to use over time.³⁷
Experts have reported that voters, in particular those in jurisdictions that hold a large number of citizen-led initiatives at each election, will often rely on the endorsement of the political party they usually vote for to decide how they will vote on the ballot or referendum. This means that advocates of this intervention may still need to spend resources to lobby various political parties to support their cause.

Our priorities for improving this evidence review summary

To improve future iterations of this summary, we plan to:

Expand the summary through a systematic review of citizen-led animal welfare campaigns across countries to identify common success factors, costs, and long-term impacts.
Strengthen cost-effectiveness evidence by incorporating or conducting additional CEAs (Cost-effective analyses), especially outside the U.S. and for a wider range of policy asks.
Include quantitative analysis of voter behavior in ballot initiatives, examining how factors like political affiliation, party endorsements, and demographics influence outcomes.
Gather structured data on legal, political, and media backlash to better assess the risks and prevalence of counter-lobby responses.
Incorporate enforcement data post-legislation to evaluate whether legal changes from citizen initiatives result in meaningful on-the-ground welfare improvements.
Benchmark citizen-led initiatives against other intervention types to better assess relative cost-effectiveness and strategic value.
Integrate insights from stakeholder and expert interviews to capture practical constraints, campaign dynamics, and decision-making considerations.
Use longitudinal and cross-national public opinion data to track alignment between sentiment, voting behavior, and legislative change.
Add examples from LMICs and underrepresented regions to improve generalizability and identify overlooked advocacy opportunities.

Paul et al. (2019)

What is this intervention?

What is our overall assessment of this intervention? How confident are we in this assessment?