Will greenhouse concerns impact meat consumption? Best-worst scaling analysis of Australian consumers

Abstract

This research explores if the greenhouse emissions associated with meat production are particularly important to Australian consumers relative to a number of other factors. As well as price and quality aspects, we tested the interest in greenhouse issues relative to other credence goods relating to environmental, health and animal welfare aspects of meat production and consumption. A best-worst scaling analysis was selected over other non-market valuation approaches because of the ability to analyse relative influences of different factors on preferences. A total of 1200 participants across all states and territories in Australia were randomly drawn to participate in an online survey and, of them, 1101 completed the best-worst choice experiment. Both the counting approach and conditional logit paired model were applied to analyse the data. Based on the best-worst score, our results suggest that the factors nominated by Australian consumers as most important to them in their meat purchasing decisions are ‘health’ followed by ‘quality and price’. Results indicate that concerns about greenhouse footprints from meat production are important but much lower relative to other factors.