Non-anthropocentric cost-benefit analysis based on animals’ willingness to pay

Despite a plethora of experiments on animals’ preferences for different resources, elicited through animals’ choices and willingness to work, the insights gained from this body of work remain largely unexploited in economics. Non-anthropocentric cost-benefit analysis (CBA) may fill this gap given that it attempts to evaluate impacts on animals using data describing the animals’ own perspective. However, economic frameworks that have used animal preference data to make inferences on animals’ monetary willingness to pay (WTP) remain limited and leave important conceptual issues unaddressed. The aim of this conceptual study is to explore novel pathways on how experimental findings describing animals’ preferences can be used for making inferences on animals’ monetary WTP in CBA. In an innovative approach, we use empirical insights, captured through an extensive literature review of animal experiments, as the main input for a process of conceptual reflection in economics. Framed within our assumptions, we present three main results: two novel concepts of farm animals’ WTP, the first based on published animal experiments and the second calling for refined experimental designs. Third, we suggest some refinements to the existing concepts of animals’ WTP. This work provides novel approaches to integrating animals’ WTP into CBA that, when adopted, would allow for greater economic representation of animal welfare into policy evaluations.