Abstract
As the COVID-19 pandemic brings about sudden change in societies across the globe and likely heralds the start of a recession, we examine the pandemic’s impact on consumer food safety perceptions. Due to its origin, COVID-19, likely spurring from an animal-to-human transmission in the context of a wet market, may impact consumer food perceptions in similar ways to the avian flu (H5N1) and the swine flu (H1N1). We examine this effect by studying preferences for beef meat in a consumer survey in the United States (n = 999) using a choice-based experiment. We compare our findings to Lim et al. (2014), who elicited consumer beef willingness to pay (WTP). Additionally, we investigate the impact of the looming recession by analyzing several attributes and their effect on consumer preferences. Our findings suggest that food safety concerns have become more important. As a result, production standards and the country of origin have lost importance. Additionally, we show that the socioeconomic impact for some respondents impacts their shopping preferences. Finally, we outline potential areas for future research as well as managerial implications.
Highlights
When the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) a pandemic, governments across the globe took restrictive action that is likely to lead to a severe economic recession resulting in increased unemployment and decreased economic welfare [1]
Our results showed that food security concerns have become more important compared to Lim et al [3], supporting Hypotheses 3 (H3), potentially due to the COVID-19 pandemic
In a consumer survey in the United States (n = 999) we were able to show that the importance of food safety attributes has increased substantially
Summary
When the World Health Organization declared the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) a pandemic, governments across the globe took restrictive action that is likely to lead to a severe economic recession resulting in increased unemployment and decreased economic welfare [1]. COVID-19, likely originating from an animal-to-human transmission in the context of a wet market [2], will undoubtedly have widespread effects on society and consumers. It is our aim to examine and understand the impact COVID-19 may have on consumer perceptions of food safety in general and for meat in particular. To achieve this aim we seek to replicate parts of the study by Lim et al [3], who examined US consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for beef with an emphasis on safety and country of origin. We seek to investigate the relative importance consumers put on food safety and the change in this importance
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