The Effects of Given Names on a Shelter Animal's Adoptability

Overview

Objectives/Goals The goal of my project was to test the adoptability of animals based on their assigned name. Methods/Materials I have talked to many shelter officials to see what kinds of names they are using in their shelters as well as reviewed their online adoption sites. Names given to animals typically fall in one of these 5 categories - food, human, characters, silly, and negative connotation. I made a survey consisting of 9 animals, each with five name options. For each animal, one name represented each category of name. Survey respondents were asked to pick which names made them most and least likely to adopt the animal. To eliminate the bias due to what the animal looked like, and how well the names fit that animal, I made five variations of the survey, each with the same names sets in front of different animals. Results Results show that food names are the best for animal adoption followed by human names. On the other hand, results showed that 40% of the time, the 136 respondents decided what made them least likely to adopt, the name was a silly name. They would rather have a dog named Crusher than Curly Que. When given the choice, 29% participants selected Hurricane as the name they were least likely to adopt, where 47% were least likely to adopt Fancypants. The participants were about 7 times more likely to adopt an animal with a human or food name than one with a silly name. Conclusions/Discussion My research demonstrates that silly names are detrimental to an animal's adoption, contrary to most shelter official's beliefs. In the future, this data could help shelter animals get adopted more easily, simply based on what naming convention is used.

Awards (1)

• First Place

Competition history

• CSEF 2017 Behavioral & Social Sciences · Entry J0401

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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