Consumer Demand Flashcards
What did Dawkins 1983, 1990 assert about consumer demand?
Once preferences and operant rewards have been established it is possible to determine how much value the animal places on them by making it pay a perceived price for example have ing to peck a key or push a lever many times to obtain the same reward.
Define compensation or resilience
Animal works harder for the same amount of reward
What are elastic and inelastic demand curves? Why are they useful?
inelastic - will use preferred resource same amount no matter what the price
elastic - use varies with cost
- Price elasticity = Ratio of % change in consumption to % change in price
> better indicator than just total time spent there eg. rooms in a house
In human economics, what do humans demonstrate as elastic and inelastic demands?
Elastic - Veg
Inelastic - petrol, drugs, alcohol
How do elasticity stidues work?
Change the “price” of something. Measure consumption
What is income elasticity?
% change in demand in response to a change in Income eg. time or energy available to the animal for performing its entire behavioural repertoire
Outline initial studies on elasticity
- operant taks
- contribution from experimental psychologists
- defined schedules of reinforcement
> fixed ratio
> fixed interval
> variable ratio
> variable interval
> progressive ratio
Give some operant studies on farm animals
Kilgour 1991 review
> Baldwin - light and heat preferences of pigs, sheep, goats, cattle, pigs. No attempt to look at increasing workload
> Fighting cocks worked on fixed ratio 25 schedule to look at themselves in a mirror or another cockerel. Not so stable on FR 75 regime.
What did Lawrence and Illius 1989 study?
Rewards worked for per session with increasing time since being fed
What did Mathews and Ladewig 1994 study?
Environmental requirements of pigs measured by behavioural demand function - opening doors
What do baboons show preference for?
When total energy budget reduced, defend social behaviour over sleep
What issues were raised regarding initial studies?
some combinations of response trained more easily than others
- hens learnt to keypeck for food but not dust bathe
How costly is a bar press/peck? - variation between individuals?
Use of natural obstacles
What did Sherwin and Nicol 1995 study?
Closed economy, natural costs - shallow water/deep water/airstream. No cost return.
- found when cost increased reprioritisiation of behaviour occurred
- feed consumption stayed the same but number of crossings decreased dramatically
What did Sherwin 1996 show?
With increasing length of water to traverse, decreasing number of visits, longer remained with resource
What did Cooper and Appleby 1995 show?
Decreasing gap width -> less number of visits chickens to nest box but increasing duration spent in the box each time
What would be predicted to be elastic/inelastic demands in animals?
Inelastic - nests
Elastic - wheel.. toys
Give a study showing real animal consumers choice.
Sherwin and Nicol 1997 - Wont work hard for additional space (?)
Wht did Houston 1997 argue?
Area under the curve better for comparison than slope of the curve
- if price measured as quantity obtained per unit (time/energy) then area under the curve can be compared between resources
What is the break point?
Max cost at which consumption starts to decrease
What did Mason 1998 argue? Who replied to this?
Animals should choose their own bout lengths - test in fully closed economies.
Cost AND resource use must vary if aim is to produce a demand curve
- animals should perceive costs equivalently for all resources
Mathews - no actual evidence that interrupted bouts are a problem
Income restriction difficult to apply without differential penalty (some activities take more time than others)
What did Sumpter 1999 compare?
^ force to open door with ^ fixed ratio to obtain food
- different shaped demand curves
- noted that ^ FR increases time taken, whereas ^ force does not
> calculted “unit price” as a function of number AND force
Holm 2002 - what did they find?
Calves often housed singly but will work for full contact/hea contact
What did Jensen 2005 find?
Motivation for lying down in dairy cows
- lying time often compromised
What did De Jong 2007 find?
Flatter demand curve (inelastic?) for peat moss than wood shavings/sand/wire
What did Sondergaard 2011 look at?
Horses working for a reward on FR
What did Jensen and Pedersen 2007 explain?
Accounting for substitutes - if some objects present may be less demand for others
What has been shown about consumer demand wrt food?
- hens pay as much for access to nest as food after 20hrs food deprivation
- Hens pay 75% as much for access to perch at dusk than food after 24 hours deprivation
- pigs attach NO more importance to a day’s access to a group pen than to the last 1/16 of their ad lib food intake
