Meat production preferences among Swedish consumers: A choice experiment with lasagna

Abstract

Growing concerns over the environmental impact of an expanding global meat production has resulted in calls for more sustainable practices. This, however, is difficult since there exist several conflicts of aim regarding a sustainable production. In this thesis, Swedish consumers’ preferences towards four environmental, ethical and health-related attributes of meat production are explored: restriction to antibiotics, animal keeping, reduction of carbon footprint, and the Swedish Keyhole label. Through a random parameter logit model, corrected for attribute non-attendance, the first two attributes are found to be ranked the highest, roughly three times higher than the latter two, given the specific attribute levels. Furthermore, differences among socio-demographic groups are explored and found to exist – primarily for gender and level of education, with small effects of age. Finally, a secondary experiment was conducted to compare the result of carrying attribute information in plain text and using colored circles. The latter case was found to increase the marginal willingness to pay for the highest level of carbon footprint reduction, and the Keyhole label.