The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated deep and chronic societal inequities, many of which are directly related to race and class (1). The murder of George Floyd in May 2020 was the catalyst for sustained protests by Black Lives Matter and other movements, primarily in the U.S. but also in other countries, including Canada. This defining moment has led to seismic changes in social awareness, causing many individuals and organizations to examine their role and culpability in perpetuating systemic inequities, and their responsibility to acknowledge and address past mistakes. This has prompted many animal welfare organizations (AWOs) to consider the role of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the design of support services and general operations (2). Since the start of the pandemic, AWOs have increasingly focused on supporting the human-animal bond by providing and promoting support for both pet parents and their pets, similar to traditional social service supports¹ (3). Additionally, new organizations have formed to promote inclusivity and combat biases². Animal welfare organizations interface with, and create a community of, multiple stakeholder groups. These include those who derive meaning and belonging from giving (volunteers, foster parents), those who welcome and cherish new non-human family members (adopters), and those who utilize other services provided by AWOs (surrenders, public veterinary services). This culture of compassion and giving is difficult to reconcile with the statement that “the animal welfare industry lives at the intersection of white privilege and systemic racism” (4).

Conversely, stakeholders include those who may be punished by and discriminated against by existing systems^3,4. Strays and surrenders are the largest sources of shelter intakes (75–80%) (5). Members of some communities are disproportionately more likely to surrender animals to AWOs, for reasons that are often directly related to poverty and social vulnerability (6, 7), or to be declined for adoption (8). In some jurisdictions, low-income and racialized individuals may be fined for their inability to comply with local ordinances such as compulsory spay/neuter (8). In one study, pet parents with lower income and less education were less likely to be able to find their lost pets (9). While many AWOs and some community clinics provide free or low-cost veterinary care, in particular vaccination and spay/neuter (10), these services are only available to those who are aware of them, understand their benefits, and have physical and financial access to them (11, 12).

Community-driven organizational activities require inclusion and representation of the community within organizations providing these services. Stakeholders such as volunteers and foster parents, who benefit from participating in and supporting organizational activities, may not represent the diversity of the community being served. Low-income and racialized communities may be overlooked in fundraising drives and searches for new volunteers, despite the fact that members of these communities have the means and desire to participate (13). Animal welfare organization staff in the U.S. and Canada are overwhelmingly white (14). Historically, the sector has not prioritized training around effective, non-judgmental engagement with non-English-speaking immigrants and marginalized and vulnerable individuals and communities. Animal welfare organizations, especially those with animal control responsibilities, can be seen as unwelcoming and threatening authority figures (3).

There is little Canadian data regarding social justice and equity in the animal welfare sector.

Passive or non-existent stakeholder analysis could perpetuate inequities and limit the effectiveness of support services. In contrast, an active analysis of service gaps and stakeholder composition would allow for strategically targeted remediation in under-served areas. In June 2020, Toronto Humane Society (THS), an independent charitable AWO in downtown Toronto, Canada, published a statement¹ in support of Black Lives Matter, and committed to specific actions to redress inequities. One of these commitments was to examine the spatial patterns of different stakeholder groups served by the organization.

The main objective of this study was to use geographic information systems (GIS) to identify and analyze geographic areas and communities currently under-serviced by our organization, in order to create targets for future programs and interventions. Geographic information systems are computer systems that are used for the creation, storage, analysis, and mapping of digital data. A secondary objective was to develop a robust methodology for the project and share this with other AWOs.

There were 1,274 CTs in the study area. Figure 1 shows the area included and the location of THS and other GTA AWOs. Stakeholder group sizes were as follows: adopters, n = 13,837; surrenders, n = 5,740; PVS clients, n = 31,074; volunteers, n = 1,989; and foster parents, n = 2,054.

This analysis was able to identify important relationships between stakeholder groups and socioeconomic metrics. The study fills an important gap in the literature pertaining to stakeholder use of AWO services and contributes to an understanding of Canadian animal welfare equity issues. Some of the relationships identified could be used to inform future welfare efforts by both THS and other local AWOs. Our data suggest that future initiatives could include development of satellite locations or mobile clinics, both to better serve families already using these services at some distance from the facility, and to reach less well-served populations. Education, particularly in schools, could be targeted to communities with lower adoption numbers. Additionally, a full assessment of marketing activities could be completed to ensure stakeholders who need the services most are aware they exist and know how to access them. Marketing strategies and methods may need to change in order to reach those who are not currently being reached.

One of the primary limitations of this study was the confounding factor of distance from THS. This effect can be summarized by Tobler's first law of geography, that “everything is related to everything else, but near things are more related than distant things” (24). This is commonly conceptualized in relation to the friction of distance theory (the idea that moving across space requires the expenditure of energy) (25) and distance decay theory (the idea that interactions between two positions decrease as distance increases) (18). Individuals living further from THS are less likely to utilize its services, particularly if there is another accessible AWO nearby, and therefore may appear to reflect a population under-served by THS that may not truly be under-served. This is supported by the fact that that many of the cold spots identified in this analysis overlap with the location of other AWOs that are geographically closer (Figure 1). However, the extent of the hot spots, particularly for the PVS client stakeholder group, suggests that THS is successfully serving a substantial geographic area, with no under-served areas identified within a 10 km radius of the facility.

Another inherent limitation of this type of spatial analysis is the influence of the modifiable areal unit problem, which is the effect that the boundaries (census tracts) used to aggregate the stakeholder data points can have on the results of the research (26). The results of the analysis may have differed if the data had been aggregated to different spatial boundaries. However, testing was also performed with smaller boundary sizes (dissemination areas) and little variation was noted between the two sets of results.

For certain stakeholder groups, removal of duplicates resulted in a substantial decrease in sample size. This was largely due the removal of instances of a single stakeholder appearing multiple times within the same year - for example, an individual surrendering multiple animals during the same year. Had these duplicates not been removed, stakeholder counts in certain CTs would have been artificially inflated. Further data cleaning, to remove stakeholders outside the GTA and those with incomplete addresses, had a much smaller effect on sample sizes, with 0.1% of the volunteer stakeholder group, 4.3% each of the adopter and foster groups, 7.9% of the PVS group and 13.6% of the surrender group being unavailable for geocoding. This was well within the recommendation of ≥80% “clean” data for GIS datasets in the animal welfare context⁶.

This study found that increasing rates of residential instability were associated with higher rates of adopters (Figure 6). One possible reason for this is that many THS adopters may be families living in rental homes (a factor included in the metric). While existing U.S. research suggests that certain housing factors such as renting correlate with lower pet ownership rates, this is most frequently due to landlord refusal to allow pets (27). Laws prohibiting Ontario landlords from banning pets (28) could contribute to the relationship identified in our study. In addition, the facility's shift to an Adopters Welcome framework⁷, some years ago, appears to have successfully decreased barriers to adoption. Further, the residential instability metric considers a greater number of children and total number of individuals living in the home to increase instability. While this may increase the residential instability metric, a greater number of children and total number of individuals living in the home generally correlates with an increase in pet ownership (29).

There was a predominantly negative linear relationship between ethnic concentration and adoption rates in central Toronto (Table 3, Figure 8). A convex relationship was also quite prominent, suggesting that while adopter rates largely decreased as ethnic concentration increased, in certain areas adopter rates then began to increase as ethnic concentration reached its highest levels. The ethnic concentration metric reflects both the proportion of residents who are recent immigrants and those who identify as part of a racialized community. A high percentage of GTA residents identify as racialized people or immigrants (51.4 and 46.1%, respectively) (15). One possible explanation for the relationship identified in the study may be cultural differences in pet ownership. Among 60 global societies, dogs were recognized as non-working companions or pets in only 22 and cats in 11 (30). Instead, animals have primarily working tasks such as hunting or vermin control (30). Alternative or parallel explanations might be lack of information, implicit bias during the adoption process, language barriers and financial considerations. A clearer understanding of the relevant factors would inform future efforts to address this service gap. Programs aimed at immigrant families could stress the benefits of pet ownership for reduction of stress for children (31), reduced feelings of loneliness and social isolation (32), increased socialization through community engagement (33), and as mental health supports (34).

In 4.08% of CTs, a higher material deprivation score was associated with a decrease in adopter rates (Figure 7). This was consistent with previous findings that higher income levels are correlated with higher pet ownership rates (35, 36). Adoption from AWOs may also be affected by factors such as physical and financial access, and perception by stakeholders. In one study, residents earning less than $20,000 per year were significantly more likely than higher income level groups to have acquired their pet from a family member or someone they knew, rather than from an AWO (37).

A legitimate concern for AWOs is the inadvertent transfer of animals from families facing material deprivation, through surrender, to higher income families, through adoption. Our analysis did not find any evidence of this. However, the largely positive linear relationship between surrenders and the proportion of Indigenous residents was noteworthy (Figure 9). This may be due to the fact that Indigenous people living in urban areas experience a higher rate of poverty (24%) than non-indigenous residents (13%) (15). Research has shown that, among low-income residents surrendering their pets in the U.S., costs (specifically those associated with veterinary care and food) were the most common reasons for surrendering an animal (38). In a 2017 Statistics Canada survey, 39% of Indigenous residents living in urban areas stated that they could not afford to pay an unexpected cost of $500 or more (39).

There were positive linear relationships between PVS clients and the residential instability, material deprivation and Indigenous metrics, with the largest effect for residential instability (39.95% of CTs) (Figure 10). The hot spot for PVS clients also extended further than other hot spots. These findings suggest that THS' public veterinary care programs are successfully reaching many families in need. Census tracts with a higher proportion of Indigenous residents were also associated with an increase in PVS use (Figure 11). This relationship may be explained by subsidized preventative wellness and spay/neuter services that are offered to residents with a Certificate of Indigenous Status and suggests that this approach is successful in making veterinary care more accessible to Indigenous individuals living within the GTA.

Notably, there were no correlations between PVS clients and ethnic concentration. This could in part be due to the lower rate of adopters associated with the ethnic concentration metric. Our findings were also in agreement with U.S. findings that race and ethnicity were not the primary determinants of veterinary care use in under-served communities (40). The authors hypothesized that structural barriers such as accessibility, transportation, and cost, rather than cultural barriers, could be more important drivers of lower access to veterinary care. However, U.S. surveys have also shown that race and ethnicity do have an effect on national pet ownership levels (41). A greater focus on culturally competent practices, targeted messaging and an understanding of accessibility barriers could allow AWOs to reach a greater proportion of families in need.

Analysis of the volunteers stakeholder group yielded very small negative linear and convex relationships with the ethnic concentration metric (see Table 3). The foster parents stakeholder group did not produce any significant relationships with any of the tested metrics. Little data is available regarding the characteristics of animal shelter volunteers or foster parents. A recent study of animal shelter volunteers in Michigan, US, found that most were white (68%), female (83%), had at least some post-secondary education (90%) and were employed full-time or retired (58%) (42). In contrast to the relatively homogenous pattern in that study, our data suggest that THS volunteers and foster parent groups were more representative of the broader community. The volunteers and foster parents stakeholder groups were substantially smaller than the other three groups, and this may also account for the lack of identified relationships. Volunteering for AWOs provides rewarding and meaningful engagement opportunities (42), and recruitment efforts should not be limited by assumptions about which segments of the community might be most interested or available. As most volunteers are recruited directly by the organization or through personal contacts (43), marginalized communities or groups should be actively approached.

This research into the spatial distribution of THS stakeholder groups identified many areas that are well served, as well as areas that are currently under-served. Correlation analysis identified many statistically significant relationships between the spatial distribution of stakeholder groups and the On-Marg Index and Indigenous metrics, such as a decrease in adopters as the ethnic concentration metric increased, and an increase in surrenders as the Indigenous metric increased. It should be noted that the relationships identified between the stakeholder groups and the five tested socioeconomic metrics do not necessarily indicate a causal relationship. Other confounding factors, such as variations in pet ownership with population density, may also influence stakeholder distributions.

Studies of this nature can allow AWOs to make informed decisions regarding their stakeholders, that take into account factors such as race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status. Ultimately, this will promote a more equitable and inclusive environment for AWOs to better serve their communities and actively address systemic barriers to access.

Future research could analyze the geographic area closest to THS in more detail, as well as GTA neighborhoods designated as high priority due to socioeconomic factors. Analysis of stakeholder data from multiple AWOs within the GTA would also help gain a better understanding of the spatial distribution of stakeholders in the GTA as a whole. This could identify areas not being adequately served by any AWO.

Given its relative simplicity, the spatial analysis performed in this study could be replicated by geospatial data analysts from other AWOs hoping to evaluate the reach and inclusiveness of their services. Organizations increasingly collect large amounts of electronic data, which lends itself to novel forms of analysis. Animal welfare organizations should consider adding data analytics skills to their staff or volunteer bases. This would allow organizations to better understand metrics that currently are not commonly utilized in this sector.

The datasets presented in this article are not readily available because the raw dataset contains identifying information for animals and stakeholders. Requests to access the datasets should be directed to tbuckingham@torontohumanesociety.com.

All authors have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved the final version.

This study was generously supported by the Animal Welfare Foundation of Canada.

All authors were employed or contracted by THS during the study. The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any other commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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