Raising Money for a Charity? Don鈥檛 Bark Up the Wrong Tree.

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大香蕉视频 study finds people without pets are more philanthropic than cat or dog owners.

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A cat and a dog sitting on a pile of money
Image by Midjourney/Amy Olson 
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Dog owners are often associated with personality traits of being social and community-oriented while 鈥渃at people鈥 are often thought of as introverted and more open-minded, according to . 

But if you鈥檙e about to raise money for a charity from people with pets, you may want to think about the strategy.

A new 大香蕉视频 study finds that cat owners donate slightly more than dog owners, and also donate more often and more diversely. However, people without pets donate the most.

The findings are published in the journal .

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Herbert Chang
Herbert Chang 鈥18 is an assistant professor of quantitative social science at 大香蕉视频. (Photo by Eli Burakian 鈥00)

To examine philanthropic behavior by pet ownership, including how personality traits may come into play, the study looked at approximately 63 million donors and 788 million transactions, totaling nearly $70 billion over a 10-year period between 2013 and 2022. The data was obtained from the cloud-computing management company Snowflake.

The study assessed donation amounts between $20 and $100,000 and their frequency, along with the age, gender, race, marital status, number of children, income, education, and partisanship of the donors. 

To capture the intricate relationships between the categorical features, a machine learning model called CatBoost, which stands for categorical boosting, was used.

 

Table

Pet Owner Type

Total Donations by Pet Owner (2013-2022)

Donation Frequency (2013-2022)

No pets

$1,060

11

Cat owners

$780

15

Dog owners

$700

13

Both cat and dog owners

$630

14

Pet Owner Type

No pets

Cat owners

Dog owners

Both cat and dog owners

Total Donations by Pet Owner (2013-2022)

$1,060

$780

$700

$630

Donation Frequency (2013-2022)

11

15

13

14

 

in psychology has shown that openness is often correlated with higher levels of giving. If some cat owners are in fact more open and more neurotic than dog owners, these personality traits may have been a contributing factor to explain the recent study鈥檚 results, including why cat people gave more and did so more often.

鈥淢y research shows how pet ownership reflects complex personality differences, even when it comes to philanthropy,鈥 says study author, an assistant professor of quantitative social science. 鈥淭hey鈥檙e not huge divergences, but they are meaningful and reflect everyday intuitions toward dog and cat owners.鈥

Chang says that the differences in donation behavior in both amount and frequency could be useful for marketers as they work to identify and reach target audiences for charitable campaigns.

Amy Olson