Animal Welfare and Policy Risk Index (AWPRI): Constructing and Validating a Cross-National Governance Risk Measure, 25 Countries, 2004-2022

TL;DR

This paper develops and validates the Animal Welfare and Policy Risk Index (AWPRI), a cross-national measure of governance risk related to animal welfare and AI policies, covering 25 countries from 2004 to 2022.

Contribution

It introduces a novel composite risk index with a rigorous validation process and demonstrates its application in assessing AI governance risks across nations.

Findings

High AI governance risk countries have higher AWPRI scores.

The L3 layer shows the highest risk scores in 2022.

Thailand, Brazil, and Argentina face increasing AWPRI risks by 2030.

Abstract

This paper introduces the Animal Welfare and Policy Risk Index (AWPRI), a composite risk index covering 25 countries over the period 2004-2022 (N=475 country-year observations). The AWPRI is constructed from 15 variables organised across three equal-weighted conceptual layers: Current Welfare State (L1), Policy Trajectory (L2), and AI Amplification Risk (L3). Variables are normalised to [0, 1] using min-max scaling, with higher values denoting greater policy risk. The index is validated through k-means cluster analysis (k=4; silhouette coefficient=0.447), principal component analysis (PCA) of the 15-variable cross-section, and sensitivity analysis under +/- 10 percentage-point layer weight perturbation (mean Spearman \r{ho}=0.993, minimum 0.979; mean Adjusted Rand Index (ARI)=0.684, range 0.477-1.000). Our Hausman specification test favours random-effects (RE) panel estimation (H=2.55, p=0.467). We use a difference-in-differences (DiD) design to exploit the 2019 AI governance risk classification divergence and find that countries identified as high-AI-governance-risk carry AWPRI scores 0.080 points higher than their low-risk counterparts, after controlling for country and year fixed effects (\b{eta}=0.080, SE=0.005, p<0.001). The L3 layer records the highest mean score in the 2022 cross-section (0.552, SD=0.175), significantly exceeding both L1 (Wilcoxon W=102,651, p<0.001) and L2 (W=99,295, p<0.001). China (0.802), Vietnam (0.612), and Thailand (0.586) record the highest composite risk scores in 2022; the United Kingdom (0.308) the lowest. AutoRegressive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA)-based projections indicate that Thailand, Brazil, and Argentina face AWPRI risk deterioration by 2030. The AWPRI and its interactive visualisation are publicly accessible at https://awpri.aiinsocietyhub.com/.