Estimating consumers’ willingness to pay for plant-based meat and cultured meat in China

Abstract

Plant-based meat and cultured meat are two emerging alternatives to meat products as they have the potential to mitigate the adverse health and environmental impacts associated with meat consumption and production. Given plant-based meat is still in its infancy and cultured meat is not yet available in China, it is important to understand the economic implications of consumer’s preference for these meat alternatives. With an online consumer survey, we elicit consumer’s willingness to pay (WTP) for these two meat alternatives using a payment card method, and specifically examine the effects of six different types of information on consumer’s WTPs. Our main findings first indicate that positive/negative information has positive/negative effects on consumers’ WTP. With positive information, both nutritional and environmental information increase consumers’ WTPs. Moreover, specific information has a larger effect than general information, only for positive nutritional information. Lastly, knowledge about these meat alternatives, self-reported previous experiences with the meat alternative, education, income level, and the presence of children are positively associated with consumers’ WTPs, while age is negatively associated. These findings may facilitate designing effective consumer information campaigns, ultimately aiding in consumers’ choice of the meat alternatives.