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

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 \pm10 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-dashboard.streamlit.app.