The Value of a Statistical Life of a Cat: Owner Demographics and Management Practices Impacting Willingness to Pay for Welfare Measures
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study estimates the Value of a Statistical Life of a cat (VSLC) in Kamloops, British Columbia, to inform animal welfare policies and community-level interventions. Using a contingent valuation survey, we assessed cat owners' willingness to pay (WTP) for control measures aimed at reducing the risk of premature death among outdoor cats. We compared WTP between indoor and outdoor cat owners and examined how demographic and attitudinal factors influenced WTP. The mean VSLC was approximately $8,000 among those willing to pay, and about $4,000 when non-payers were included. Notably, VSLC estimates were similar for both indoor and outdoor cat owners, suggesting that WTP reflects broader community concern for cat welfare rather than individual pet ownership circumstances. Regression results indicated that higher WTP was significantly associated with female gender, household income, concern for local wildlife, and support for cat licensing. These findings provide an economic basis for policies promoting responsible pet ownership and risk reduction for outdoor cats.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".