“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
~Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride
Animal welfare groups often talk about using ‘incentives’ to change owner behaviour and improve the situation for pets. And used correctly, incentives do have a powerful effect on human behaviour. But often we mix up and misunderstand the difference between what we think we’re offering – an incentive to ‘good’ behaviour – and what we’re actually offering – a disincentive to ‘bad’ behaviour. This mistake in our approach, can have disastrous results.
If you encourage or reward something (incentive), you get more of it. If you discourage or punish something (disincentive), you get less of it. Simple.
But its it’s actually not really that simple. Whether dog training, kid wrangling or sorting out the mother-in-law, incentives and disincentives work differently.
Incentives (rewards) can be small if the behaviour you want is easy, palatable and your ‘target’ motivated to please you/comply. Incentives have to be large if the behaviour you want is hard, inconvenient or your target doesn’t really care to do what you want them to do.
If you use disincentives (punishment) against your ‘target’ when they are motivated to comply, you can actually reduce compliance as they rebel against you. When you use disincentives against unmotivated targets, the punishment has to be so large and so unpleasant so as to make not complying, less pleasant than complying.
Disincentives are generally less effective, since they involve ‘enforcement’ (ongoing punishment) which is labour and energy intensive. There is also the potential for the situation to get worse if your target becomes resentful to your punishment and you can need stronger and stronger punishment to get the same level of compliance in future.
For example; You need your teenager to clean his bedroom. If he’s a tidy kid, a small reward (like a please and thank you) may be enough. If he’s unmotivated, a larger reward (like the promise of being able to do something fun later) would be needed to get him off the couch. To punish a compliant teenager makes no sense whatsoever and may very well lead to resentment and less room cleaning in future. While a punishment for an unmotivated teenager, would conceivably need to be so enormous and well crafted, that the effort expended might actually be more than that needed to clean the room in the first place. The cost is more than the result!
In the animal welfare field, things get even more murky.
Let’s look at Mandatory Desexing. It is often billed as an ‘incentive for people to get their pets sterilised’; it’s not. What it actually is, is a disincentive to people having an undesexed pet.
A true ‘incentive for people to get their pets desexed’ would be something positive to inspire people to comply. Free or discount desexing would be an incentive for people who wouldn’t normally get their pet desexed. A discount on pet registration, would be an incentive for people who already get their pets desexed, when they register it. Rewards for responsible pet owners in the community like a raffle for movie tickets or some other kind of recognition can be used to motivate. Using incentives can bring about changes in behaviour, or reinforce existing behaviour.
The problem with using disincentives to achieve the same outcomes is thus; motivated individuals don’t need punishing, they need help with overcoming obstacles to compliance, while unmotivated individuals need such a large punishment, that its hard to think of one that would do the job.
What could you conceivably do to an owner who doesn’t comply with your mandatory desexing directive?
Take their pet away? Will they care? Do you really need more impounds?
Fine them? Can they just deny that the animal is theirs? Will it just lead to the pet being impounded?
Berate them? Shame them? Do they care what you think?
This is where these kinds of initiatives fail and why mandatory desexing is often billed as ‘unenforceable’. You cannot reasonably make the punishment so large and so unpleasant so as to make not doing, less pleasant than doing.
Another example is Nillumbik Council’s decision to refuse to register undesexed cats. This is deemed as ‘an incentive for owners to desex their cats’ – but there is absolutely no incentive (reward) offered! What it actually is, is a ‘disincentive for owners of undesexed cats to register them’. Surely, the intention should be to get more cats registered, and more cats desexed. More compliance with responsible pet ownership behaviour, not less.
Using disincentives definitely has a place in animal welfare law. In the case of serious breaches of welfare or abuse, then laws should be in place to make disincentives (punishments) large for transgressors. A large enough disincentive can act as a warning to others.
But in the case of small or incremental improvements in owner behaviour, disincentives are ineffective, simply because the resources available for enforcement is generally small, the disincentives (punishments) are minor and those most negatively effected are motivated, but non-compliant owners (those people who would comply if someone would help them to). Meanwhile, seriously non-motivated pet owners (the truly ‘irresponsible’) are very unlikely to care what law you dream up.
Take the time to think hard about the laws you advocate for; are you really advocating for is an ‘incentive to pet owner behaviour improvements’, or are you really trying to push through an impotent ‘disincentive, punishment-based mandate’, which will drive a wedge between you and your community, and likely fail to achieve its aims.
Knowing can make the world of difference.