What Makes Us React to the Abuse of Pets, Protected Animals, and Farm Animals: The Role of Attitudes, Norms, and Moral Obligation.

This study tests a theoretical model explaining reactions to animal abuse in terms of attitudes, norms, and moral obligation, based on research concerning pro-environmental and anti-ecological behavior, as offenses against animals have been considered environmental crimes in legal terms. The sample consisted of 624 people from the general population, aged 18 to 93 (64.1% female), randomly assigned one of three versions of the same scenario of abuse, differing in the category of animal (protected/pet/farm). Participants were requested to complete a questionnaire that included items about the observed variables (descriptive social norm) and latent variables (injunctive social norm, personal norm, moral obligation, attitude toward animals, speciesism, and reaction to animal abuse). The resulting model obtained appropriate fit indices (RMSEA = 0.054; CFI = 0.917) and a high percentage of explained variance of reaction (77%) and confirmed the expectation that moral obligation is the strongest predictor of reactions to animal abuse and activates the personal norm. Personal norm is predicted by attitudes toward animals and the injunctive social norm, which depends on the descriptive social norm. Speciesism was excluded from the model due to its negative covariance with attitudes toward animals and to provide a better-fitting model. The results are discussed in terms of how the human-animal relationship is mediated by the role played in animal categorization, not only by their characteristics, but also by the instrumentality attributed to them socially and culturally.