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Dates: October 2023 - October 2026 

Background 

Despite the idealised concept of the “forever home”, many dogs in the UK move between owners in their lifetime. Although many thousands of dogs are rehomed by formal rehoming organisations, dogs needing new homes are increasingly rehomed via private sales, including via online classified advertisement platforms. While online advertisements can result in a wide audience to find an appropriate new home for a dog, there are also potential welfare concerns with this rehoming mechanism. For example:

• Scant regulation may encourage puppy and dog dealers that have little regard for the welfare of their dogs before sale to use this route to sell unwanted breeding dogs or unsold older puppies.
• Dogs sold via this route could be acquired for uses which harm the dog’s welfare such as intensive breeding of dog-fighting.
• Lack of transparency about health or behavioural problems in adverts or during the selling process may result in poor dog welfare (e.g., being sold to a home unable to meet their needs), risks to owner well-being (e.g., increased risk of dog bites), and increased risk of being re-sold.
• Dog breeds or types popularised in films, television, and social media may be at particular risk of being bought on impulse and re-sold.

Little is understood about the re-sale of dogs through online advertisements: the demographics of dogs advertised; the demographics, motivations, and experiences of their sellers and buyers; or how the UK public perceives the online re-sale of dogs compared to other rehoming options.

Increased understanding of the re-sale market for dogs can provide an evidence-base for policy, regulation, and public information campaigns about sales of dogs over 16 weeks old which address factors associated with dog population trends and barriers to good welfare in dog rehoming and reselling – whether finding a new home for a dog or a new dog for a home.

Methods 

This project will aim to fill knowledge gaps in the rehoming or reselling dogs over 16 weeks through three strands of research:

1. Natural language processing of advertisement text scraped from online selling platforms to identify seller types and the characteristics of dogs aged over 16 weeks offered for sale. Data scraped from thousands of advertisements will be examined for trends over time and location, identifying any changes in dog and seller characteristics in advertisements with recent introduction of self-regulation by online platforms, and trends in dog popularity.
2. Semi-structured interviews with people who have placed or responded to an online advertisement for dogs aged over 16 weeks to characterise their experiences, motivators and barriers for re-sale and acquisition, and identify potential canine welfare risks. Interview transcripts will be thematically analysed to develop themes capturing the complexity of the decisions behind online dog sales and purchases.
3. Build on data collected in the first two strands to conduct a UK-wide survey to explore public perceptions of rehoming or reselling a dog over 16 weeks old through all mechanisms, including online advertisements, measuring the scale and distribution of people’s experiences, behaviours, and attitudes.

External Supervisors

Funding 

This project is funded by .