A recently published Dartmouth study landed on some interesting findings about pet owners and their philanthropic habits.
While pet owners in general donate the most frequently to charitable causes, it was found that the non-pet owners donated the highest amounts.
Professor Herbert Chang is an assistant quantitative social science professor at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and was a lead author on the research.
He said he counts both cat and dog owners among his close friends, and that the study was inspired by a simple question: Who gives more charitably? Cat owners or dog owners?
So when an enormous amount of data from a marketing company that worked with a few hundred long-standing nonprofits was at his fingertips, he took the opportunity to dig for an answer.
"I basically had this big data set at my disposal," he said. "And after poking around, I found that a data column said, 'pet ownership,' and I realized this was an incredible opportunity to answer a question about cat owners versus dog owners."
Chang said it showed what we might find obvious — that different types of pet owners have different types of behavior, and pet ownership reflects complex personality differences, even when it comes to philanthropy.
For the study, he said he chose to hone in on the years between 2012 and 2023, and the data included things such as income, plus plenty of demographic data, including pet ownership.
The study analyzed $69 billion in donations over the 10-plus year time span, involving 787 million transactions across various nonprofit organizations.
Donation amounts between $20 all the way up to $100,000 were assessed, as well as their frequency. Other data points were considered, like income, age, gender, race, number of children, marital status and education, as well as political leanings.
And the nonprofits weren't only animal welfare charities, but ranged from those that were public-health related, as well as political and religion-related nonprofits.
"I went in not knowing whether cat owners or dog owners would donate more," Chang said. That's party due, he said, because of the existing dueling hypothesis based on stereotypes and research into what we know about cat and dog owners.
Chang said when we think about dog owners, we think of energetic, social and community-driven individuals, so we might hypothesize that they care more about social issues.
"On the other hand," Chang said, "research has also shown that cat owners, in terms of personality, are more open," and even neurotic — a spectrum that could have a positive effect on one's drive to give to causes one cares about.
In psychology, Chang said, "Openness means you're more open to different ideas. And so there are basically these two dueling hypotheses in terms of which of these owners might donate more."
Chang said finding that pet-free people donate the most was somewhat surprising. "But one thing that I found fun was cat owners tend to donate the most frequently."
And at the risk of seeming like he was siding with one group of pet-owning pals over another, Chang laughed and said, "I was a bit stressed about publishing these results!"
"More research is definitely needed to understand this better," he said. And looking at inclinations toward certain social ties, like kin, friends and larger community, could further understanding.
"It's just one of the biggest questions that people have been asking for a long time," Chang said.
And at least in this research, findings show that one point goes to the cat owners.
Chang's study findings are published in the journal Anthrozoӧs.
