Humane refinements improve public willingness to fund future research in entomology: Cross-sectional survey of UK and USA publics

Entomological research is pivotal to both fundamental and applied scientific advances. However, recent work has shown that the public increasingly believes insects feel pain and that insect research without ethical oversight related to animal welfare reduces public trust in scientists. Insofar as public trust relates to the public’s willingness to fund research, entomologists have practical reasons to consider their subjects’ welfare in research and report transparently on it in publications. The study aims were to assessed public attitudes towards five common entomology research practices (behavioral observation, aversive learning, live dissection, toxicology testing, and lethal collections) among a census-matched sample of adults from the United States ( n  = 665) and United Kingdom ( n  = 696), as well as the impact of making a welfare-related change or non-welfare-related change to each research area on public willingness to fund that research in the future. Participants indicated their attitudes and willingness to fund future research on a 7-point Likert scale and open-ended text explanations of their answers were analyzed by qualitative content analysis. The study demonstrated that lethal practices significantly reduced attitude scores, and that practices that involved damage or noxious stimulation before death reduced attitude scores even further. Across all experiments, participants were more likely to increase research funding when welfare-refined practices were proposed, compared to neutral changes or original practices; for some practices, welfare refinement flipped the participant group from decreased willingness to fund to increased willingness to fund (lethal collecting, live dissection). Overall, the least invasive and lethal practice had the highest willingness to fund. These data suggest that public attitudes, and thereby willingness to fund research, are affected by the degree of welfare refinement in entomology research and highlights the need for increased consideration of insect welfare in experimental design and reporting.