For high volume shelters, moving animals out the door as
quickly as possible is crucial, and running a successful adoption program is
one way to achieve quick movement. There is a plethora of ways to create
adoption success: strong adoption promotion, open adoptions procedures, and
reasonable adoption fees. But, have you ever thought about what impact the mix
of animals in the adoption room has on the overall adoption rates? Specifically,
does the presence of kittens help or hinder the adoption rate of older cats?
Dr. Kate Hurley and Dr. Sandra Newbury of the UC Davis Koret
Shelter Medicine Program (http://www.sheltermedicine.com/)
have lectured and researched this concept. According to their lectures, in adoption
rooms across the nation “the more, the merrier” notion is often employed
without much thought to animal presentation or organization. We pack as many
cats into the adoption room as possible, and leave it up to the animals to sell
themselves. Those shelter animals are so darn adorable and do a great job of it,
but research and data are actually showing that a little forethought and
planning can improve adoption rates. In his book, The Paradox of Choice:
Why More is Less, author Barry Schwartz argues that eliminating consumer
choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers. So, extrapolating this concept
to an adoption room is another way that animal shelters can work to improve
their adoption rates.
A few notes about these data:
- Kittens are 4 months and younger; non-kittens are 5 months and older.
- Two months were chosen because kitten intake rates fluctuate seasonally (February = lower kitten intake; August = higher kitten intake) so looking at two different months can help account for this fluctuation.
- If no kittens were available for adoption on any day in the month, the day was removed from the dataset, thus there are less data points than days of the month.
That being said, let’s look at the data:
Analysis:
We can ascertain from the
negative slope of the trend line for both months that having kittens available
for adoption actually detracts from adoption rates of non-kittens. But, the
negative slope improves in August—a time when kitten intake is at its highest:- In February, for every 4 additional kittens available, this shelter looses about 3 non-kitten adoptions
- In August, for every 3 additional kittens available, this shelter loses about 1 non-kitten adoption
So, does this mean that shelters should not make kittens available
for adoption? Certainly not! But, analyzing data in this way can be the first
step towards understanding adoption patterns and choices. Knowing that kittens
will take away from adoptions of other cats will help shelter managers space
kitten arrival in the adoption room or increase their use of foster-to-adoption
programs (an emerging trend in animal sheltering to “foster” underage kittens
to families with the eventual hope/mutual understanding that the family will
adopt the kitten when it is of age) for young and underage kittens.
- Adopter preferences of males vs females
- Adoption rates of different colors (black vs. non-black) or coat patterns (solid vs. tabby)
- Adoption rates for various kennels or rooms housing available animals (do animals housed in the kennels near the front of the room get adopted at different rates than those housed near the back?)
And, to further analyze this topic, I would look at each
month of the year separately, and then the entire year as an aggregate. In addition, I
would play with the age of kittens a little to see if the data change in any
way. For example, define a kitten as anything under 6 months old, or twelve
months old. And, then further split the age groups: kittens vs. seniors, kittens vs. young adults, kittens vs.adults, etc...
