Consumers’ Valuation for Lab Produced Meat: An Investigation of Naming Effects

Abstract

“In-vitro” meat (IVM) technology could be seen as a solution that could overcome some of the concerns linked to conventional meat production, such as the expected demand increase, pressure on crop outputs, large greenhouse emission, high land, energy and water usage as well as consumers’ concerns related to animal welfare. One of the main drawback of IVM is that consumers’ might be reluctant to consume meat from this technology due to the perceived revulsion, lack of naturalness, taste, uncertainty about environmental benefits, and safety concerns. In this research, we aim to investigate consumers’ perception and willingness to pay (WTP) for IVM chicken by testing whether the use of different names for the IVM technology (i.e. “cultured”, “lab-grown” and “artificial”) will lead to different consumers’ preferences and WTP values. We conducted an online choice experiment (CE) in the United States with 625 participants to elicit consumers’ WTP for IVM fresh skinless boneless chicken breast products. To test naming effects, we used a between-subjects approach by randomly assigning respondents to three treatments. The treatments differed only on the name used to describe IVM technology (i.e. “cultured”, “lab-grown” and “artificial”). Results from Random Parameters Logit (RPL) models in WTP space shows that on average consumers prefer fresh skinless boneless chicken breast products produced with conventional meat technology with information about antibiotics free. Consumers tend to highly reject the IVM technology, with strong differences across the names. The term “cultured” is less disliked than the terms “artificial” and “lab-grown”. Finally, implications and suggestions for policy makers and food operators are discussed along with future research avenues.