Modeling the Impact of Pets on Household Happiness

This project studies an economic model that applies economic principles, such as utility optimization, budget and time constraints, opportunity cost and diminishing marginal utility, to explain how households make choices about having pets. Based on the microeconomic theories of the household, particularly for fertility, the proposed model considers key parameters in pet adoption choices such as the household preference toward pet companionship, the number and welfare of pets, the price of pet care goods and services, the time spent for caregiving, the household income, and the household utility (happiness or life satisfaction). This work conducts a marginal cost-benefit analysis to examine the relationships among those parameters and derive the conditions to maximize the household utility by having pets. Computational experiment results reveal how parameter value combinations vary at and around utility maxima.

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