Exploring Factors That Influence Public Engagement of Adoptable Pets on Facebook.

Area of Science:

• Animal behavior and welfare
• Digital communication and social media engagement
• Animal rescue and adoption studies

Background:

• Lower-than-expected animal adoption rates from shelters persist despite available animals.
• Animal shelters utilize social media to increase visibility and promote adoptions.
• Limited research exists on the effectiveness of specific social media content in driving adoption interest.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how social media post content influences public engagement with adoptable shelter animals.
• To analyze the impact of animal type, depicted environment, and media format (pictures/videos) on engagement metrics.
• To compare social media engagement trends for adoptable animals pre-pandemic (2019) versus during the pandemic (2020).

Main Methods:

• Exploratory study analyzing Facebook posts from 13 US animal shelters.
• Content analysis of posts focusing on animal type, sex, environment, and media format.
• Comparative analysis of engagement (likes, shares) between 2019 and 2020 posts.

Main Results:

• Social media posts effectively promote adoptable animals.
• Animal type (dog vs. cat) and environment (e.g., home vs. other) significantly influence post engagement (likes and shares).
• Engagement patterns differed between pre-pandemic and pandemic periods: Fall 2019 posts received more likes, while Fall 2020 posts garnered more shares.

Conclusions:

• Social media is a viable tool for promoting animal adoption.
• Strategic content choices, including animal type and environment depiction, can enhance engagement.
• The COVID-19 pandemic and increased online activity altered social media engagement dynamics for shelter animals, necessitating further research into optimal online promotion strategies.