Background

10 Weeks to Vegan is a weekly email series from Vegan Outreach containing tips, recipes, and resources for those interested in learning more about veganism. To assess the effectiveness of our program, we surveyed participants before and after they began the email series.

The pre-test was emailed to participants the same week they sign up for 10 Weeks to Vegan. We sent the post-test approximately two weeks after people have finished the entire 10 Weeks to Vegan series. To encourage participation, we offered a $50 Amazon gift card to two randomly chosen participants per month.

Response Rate

We first started sending out the U.S./Canada pre-test in September 2018. It went to 48,020 people. Of those, 3,337 participants completed the survey, for a response rate of 7%.

We sent the post-test to those 3,337 people. Of those, 516 completed the survey, for a response rate of 15.5%.

Results

Below are the results from the 500 participants who received the U.S./Canada version of 10 Weeks to Vegan and took both the pre-test and the post-test. Please note, we excluded from our data participants who reported reading 0 of the emails and analyzed data from the remaining 500 participants.

Self-Identification

At the time of the pre-test, 408 people self-identified as non-vegan (either meat-eater or vegetarian) and 92 self-identified as vegan. After completing 10 Weeks to Vegan, 322 people self-identified as non-vegan and 178 people self-identified as vegan. In other words, 21% of those who identified as non-vegan at the start of the program identified as vegan after completing it.

Food Intake

New Vegans

Although some participants identified a certain way (as described in the Self-Identification section above), their reported food intake didn’t always line up with those labels. The pre-test asks how often participants ate various animal products in the last month and the post-test asks how often in the last week. When we take into consideration participants’ reported diet, we see that there was actually a net gain of 55 vegans, or a change rate of 13% of non-vegans to vegans.

Elimination of Categories of Animal Products

We also looked at how often people ate certain animal products when they started 10 Weeks to Vegan compared to after completing it. There were statistically significant reductions in all categories of animal products. The results were still meaningful when we looked at participants who did not go vegan by the end of the program. The data in this section excludes those who identified as vegan at the start and/or end of the program.

Reasons For Signing Up

Participants cited various and often multiple reasons for signing up for 10 Weeks to Vegan. For most, their motivation behind signing up for the program fell into a few main categories:

• Health
• Help with transitioning to veganism
• Recipes
• Insight into veganism
• Animal welfare
• Environment
• Reduce animal product consumption

Breaking Down Results by Signup Source

We also looked at whether results varied based on how we signed people up for the series (for example, college outreach vs using online ads). The majority of ad sign-ups were from online. Of those who had completed the post-test survey, 237 people signed up in-person and 263 signed up through ads. Overall, those who signed up via ads showed greater change.

Based on the question which asked participants to self-identify, we found that:

• 11% of participants who signed up in-person identified as non-vegan during the pre-test and as vegan at the post-test
• 29% of participants who signed up through an ad identified as non-vegan during the pre-test and as vegan at the post-test

After assessing how often people ate certain animal products when they started 10 Weeks to Vegan compared to after completing it, we found that:

• 7% of participants who signed up in-person were categorized as non-vegan during the pre-test and as vegan at the post-test
• 18% of participants who signed up through an ad were categorized as non-vegan during the pre-test and as vegan at the post-test

Additionally, we broke down results by animal product consumption before and after completing 10 Weeks to Vegan and found the following:

While we want the highest conversion rate possible, it’s the absolute number of vegans that is the most important metric for us. When doing outreach, our tactic is normally to sign up anyone who’s willing, even if they haven’t been previously primed to be interested in going vegan.

Summary

This research indicates that Vegan Outreach’s 10 Weeks to Vegan series is having a great deal of success in motivating and helping people to become vegetarian and vegan.