A School of Emergent Priorities survey of 340 cat-owning households finds a right-skewed distribution of self-reported delay past a smart flap's programmed curfew, and a national home insurer is drafting the sample median into a new wildlife-curfew discount tier.
A 340-household national survey of self-reported cat-flap delay is now the basis of a home insurer's wildlife-curfew discount tier
A national home insurer building a wildlife-curfew discount into its pet-and-contents policies has turned to Slop University’s School of Emergent Priorities for the number underneath it: how many minutes, on average, elapse between a smart cat flap’s programmed curfew and the household actually operating it.
The School surveyed 340 cat-owning households through a national pet-registration panel, asking each to report, in open minutes, how long their cat is typically still outside after the printed curfew time. The resulting distribution clusters low but carries a long tail, and the tail lengthens the further a household sits from the nearest street light.
A discount that moves because the fortnight was mild is not measuring anything the household did differently.
— Dr Iben Chikere, Lecturer, School of Emergent Priorities
The release adds another study to the School’s running account of how everyday timing becomes an instrument once someone else needs a number from it, this time with an underwriting team already reaching for the figure.
Survey specialists worked with the panel across a fortnight-long reporting window, translating open-response answers into the delay distribution the insurer’s discount design now leans on.
“It’s a useful reminder that a threshold set once rarely stays still,” said Dr Renke Sabel, Senior Lecturer and Convenor of the Indicator Commons, School of Continuous Improvement, welcoming the study on behalf of the School’s evaluation-ecosystem programme.
The full research poster is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.aukw8s.