Volume 30, Issue 4. Who likes circus animals?

Transcription

1 Volume 30, Issue 4 Who lkes crcus anmals? Roberto Zanola Unversty of Eastern Pedmont Abstract Usng a sample based on 268 questonnares submtted to people attendng the Acquatco Bellucc crcus, Italy, ths paper analyzes the crcusgoers's preferences for crcus anmals. Results show that hgher preferences for crcus anmals are related to frequency of consumpton. However, dfferently from what commonly expected, more educated and younger people seem to be less senstve to the clams of anmal welfare organzatons. A frst draft of ths work was completed whle I was vstng at Unversty of York, Department of Economcs. Thanks are due to Andrew Jones and an anonymous referee. The usual dsclamers apply. Ctaton: Roberto Zanola, (2010) ''Who lkes crcus anmals?'', Economcs Bulletn, Vol. 30 no.4 pp Submtted: Aug Publshed: December 09, 2010.

2 1. Introducton Anmals play a vtal role n the performances of tradtonal crcuses. However, worldwde there s a growng movement aganst the use of anmals n the crcus shows. Many anmal welfare campagners want wld anmals banned from crcuses, clamng t s undgnfed and wrong, and anmal lobbes have nduced Parlaments to produce more and more strngent legslatons on anmal welfare. These regulatons are lkely to preclude smaller crcuses from havng numbers wth anmals, as well as mposng growng costs on bgger crcus whch wll mpact on future shows, undermnng the possblty for tradtonal crcuses to exst n the future. Wthout gong nto the debate on anmal rghts, whch s out of the scope of ths study, an mplct assumpton n such a debate s that crcusgoers lke crcus anmals. Is t true? The purpose of ths paper s to emprcal nvestgate such a queston. To ths am, a sample of 268 questonnares submtted to people attendng Acquatco Bellucc crcus n Alessandra (Italy) were used. Ths paper contrbutes to the lterature n a number of respects. Frst, t sheds lght on the market for crcus; more specfcally, t s the frst study to nvestgate the crcusgoers preference for crcus anmals. Secondly, t adds some evdence to the debate on crcus anmal welfare to the extent that t helps to dentfy characterstcs whch make people more sensble to ban wld anmals from crcuses. The rest of the paper s organzed as follows. Secton 2 descrbes method and data. Results are dscussed n Secton 3. Secton 4 concludes. 2. Method and data Crcusgoers s preferences for crcus anmals are represented by a contnuous latent varable Y*, snce these preferences are not drectly observable, the questonnare responses, Y, are used as a proxy for such preferences. The mpact of ndependent varables on preferences for anmal crcus are assessed by applyng the generalzed ordered logt model, whch relaxes the assumpton of the standard ordnal regresson analyss that the explanatory varables have equal effects across the levels of preference. The generalzed ordered logt model estmates a set of coeffcents for each of the M-1 ponts at whch the dependent varable can be dchotomzed. It can be shown that the probabltes that Y wll take on each of the values 1,..., M are equal to ' ( = 1) = 1 F ( X β1 ) ' ( = j) = 1 F ( X β ) F ( X β ) P Y P Y j 1 ( = M ) = F ( X β ) P Y M 1 j j = 2,..., M 1 where β s a K 1 vector, X contans K explanatory varables, and F(.) s the cumulatve logstc functon. The sample analyzed conssts of 268 self-reported questonnares submtted to a sample of people attendng Acquatco Bellucc crcus n Alessandra (Italy), between 1 and 11 March Ths sample cannot be consdered representatve n the statstcal sense of term snce (1)

3 characterstcs of the populaton of crcusgoers are not reported anywhere. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, no data exsts on crcusgoers preferences and the case study nature of the sample can be of some utlty to analyze the ssue of crcus anmals. Moreover, out of more than 100 Italan crcuses, Acquatco Bellucc s one of the bgger crcus [Zanola, 2009], whose spectators are lkely to represent the standard crcusgoer. Table 1 summarzes the man statstcs. TABLE 1. Descrptve statstcs Varable Obs Mean Std. Dev. Mn Max anma male edu young freq The dependent varable, anma, measures the preferences of crcusgoers for crcus anmals. It s measured on a four-pont scale wth categores 1 = no preference, 2 = low preference, 3 = moderate preference, 4 = hgh preference. The ndependent varables are gender, male, a dummy varable whch assumes value of 1 f male, 0 otherwse; educaton, edu, a dummy whch assumes value of 1 f hgh school educated or hgher, 0 otherwse; crcusgoers age, young, a dummy whch assume value of 1 f aged between 18 and 35 years old, 0 otherwse; younger than frequency, freq, a dscrete contnuous varable whch regsters how many tmes the ndvdual went to crcus wthn 3 years before. 3. Results To evaluate the proportonal odds assumpton for the multvarate model, Brant test s performed. It ndcates that the proportonal odds assumpton dd not hold for some covarates. Hence, a generalzed ordered logt model s estmated by usng the GOLOGIT2 routne [Wllams, 2006] n STATA Table 2 dsplays results. Although a word of cauton s necessary due to the chosen comparson across categores of dependent varable whch could nfluence results, the emprcal evdence shows that covarates that we have dentfed play a crucal role n shapng preferences for crcus anmals. In fact, postve coeffcents ndcate that hgher values on the covarate make t more lkely that respondent wll be n a hgher category of Y than current one. Not surprsngly, gender s a good predctor of preferences for crcus anmals. Culture and age are also good predctors of preferences. Yet nterestngly, the postve sgn of both coeffcents s not the one that we would expected. In fact, t s commonly assumed that younger and more educated people are more senstve to anmal welfare clams, whereas postve coeffcents ndcate that hgher value of the explanatory varables ncrease the lkelhood of beng n the a hgher category of preferences. For the unconstraned explanatory varable, ndvduals become more supportve of crcus anmals wth ncreasng frequency, but the greatest effect of frequency was to push ndvduals towards the most extremely postve judgement.

4 TABLE 2. Preferences for crcus anmals anma Covarate Coef. Std.Dev. 1 + male.4100* edu.5570**.2656 young.5957**.2498 freq cons male.4100*.2455 edu.5570**.2656 young.5957**.2498 freq.2285*.1259 cons * male.4100*.2455 edu.5570**.2656 young.5957**.2498 freq.5314***.1285 cons *** Wald χ Number of Obs 230 McFadden Pseudo R The frst panel contrasts category 1 wth categores 2,3, and 4; ++ the second panel contrast category 1 and 2 wth categores 3 and 4; +++ the thrd panel contrasts category 1, 2, and 3 wth category 4. ***p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.10. Although the analyss of the mpact of a change n covarate on the response varable dstrbuton usng margnal probabltes s nterestng n ts own, the analyss of margnal probabltes may reveal a subtler nsght. To ths am, the MFX2 routne n STATA 10.0 s used to estmate the margnal probablty effects for a typcal consumer, defned for every covarate by fxng the rest of the covarates at ther mean (or ther mode for categoral covarates). The results are summarzed n Table 3. TABLE 3. Margnal Probablty Effects for Covarates Pr( y = 1) Pr( y = 2) (1) (2) male * * (.03495) (.0227) edu ** (.0442) young *** (-0351) freq ***p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.10 (.0231) ** (.0221) **. (.0236) (.0245) ( y = ) Pr 3 (3).0096 (.0090) 0228 (.0177).0127 (.0114) ** (.0266) ( y = ) Pr 4 (4).0857* (.0516).1101** (.0497).1248** (.0529).1103*** (.0263) Examnng Table 3, the coeffcent related to beng a male s negatve and sgnfcantly dfferent from zero n the models 1 and 2. In the model 4 the margnal effect shows that beng a male ncreases the probablty to regster hgh preference for anmals by 8.6 per cent. The other varables that we estmated dsplay a profle whch s nearly the same as wth the gender varable. Both educated people and younger people are lkely to report low preference for

5 crcus anmals n the models 1 and 2, whle n the model 4 the margnal effects of beng educated and young ncrease the probablty to lke crcus anmals. Fnally, the margnal effect for the model 4 shows that beng a hgh frequency crcusgoer ncreases the probablty to lke crcus anmals, supportng the noton that crcus anmals consumpton s an experence good, for whch future demand reles on the perceved value of the experence after consumpton. 4. Concluson Ths paper analyzed the preferences for crcus anmals by ndvduals who attended crcus. Although to our knowledge ths study s the frst to use mcro data on crcus preferences, however, we are aware that a more complete understandng of such preferences requres a natonally representatve, populaton-based sample, unfortunately, not avalable at present. As a consequence, a word of cauton d necessary n drvng conclusons. Emprcal fndngs suggest some nterestng nsghts. Hgher preferences for crcus anmals are related to frequency of consumpton. However, dfferently from what commonly expected, more educated and younger people seem to be less senstve to the clams of anmal welfare organzatons. The market for crcus s substantal worldwde. An understandng of the characterstcs of crcusgoers' preferences s undoubtedly useful to crcus supplers lookng to preserve and expand ther markets. All together these results could be a key concern for mplementng such marketng strateges.

6 References Perre, G. and S. Scarpetta (2006) Employment protecton: Do frms' perceptons match wth legslaton? Economcs Letters 90, Wllams, R. (2006) Generalzed ordered logt/partal proportonal odds models for ordnal dependent varables Stata Journal 6(1), Zanola, R. (2009) Major nfluences on crcus attendance Emprcal Economcs 38(1),