The Cross-Cultural Importance of Animal Protection and Other World Social Issues

In an increasingly global landscape, NFP (not-for-profit) initiatives including those addressing animal protection, are increasingly operating cross-borders. Doing so without respect, local engagement, and a thorough understanding of the issues of concern is fraught with danger, and potentially wasteful of resources. To this purpose, we sought to understand attitudes to the importance of 13 major world social issues in relation to animal protection (including reducing poverty, racial, LGBT and gender equality, environmental protection, sustainable development, genetic engineering and capital punishment) by surveying 3433 students from at least 103 universities across 12 nations. The emergence of a ‘nature trifecta’ was suggested, with animal and environmental protection and sustainable development recurring as the most highly rated in importance across all countries, with these issues also consistently rating amongst the highest in each individual country. It is concluded that significant differences exist between attributed importance of world issues by nation, pointing towards the benefit of tailoring NFP (including animal protection) initiatives by country and region. It is also suggested that nation, or more specifically, sociopolitical and cultural region, is a vitally important demographic for consideration in social development.