The price of good welfare: Does informing consumers about what on-package labels mean for animal welfare influence their purchase intentions?
Introduction
In many countries, societal attitudes towards animals are changing and the public are showing increasing levels of concern for the welfare of animals in the human domain, particularly in the contexts of food production (Bennett & Blaney, 2003; McEachern, Schröder, Willock, Whitelock, & Mason, 2007). Attitudes have been described as learned dispositions that explain behaviour (Coleman, 2007). Thus, understanding public attitudes towards animals can provide insights into human behaviour towards animals, including food-purchase intentions. However, it is worth mentioning that farm animal welfare often falls victim to what is referred to as the attitude-behaviour gap, whereby consumers’ concerns for animal welfare do not always manifest reliably as higher welfare purchase decisions at the supermarket checkout (Aschemann-Witzel & Niebuhr Aagaard, 2014; Auger & Devinney, 2007; Bray, Johns, & Kilburn, 2011; de Bakker & Dagevos, 2012; De Barcellos, Krystallis, de Melo Saab, Kügler, & Grunert, 2011).
In Australia, pro-welfare attitudes are growing. An Australian survey of shoppers found that 92% of respondents were concerned about animal welfare in food production (Cornish, Ashton, Raubenheimer, & McGreevy, 2019). Similarly, a recently released government-funded survey into Australian attitudes to animal farming found that 95% of respondents were concerned about farm animal welfare and 91% wanted some form of regulatory reform (Futureye, 2019). Several socio-demographic factors predict public attitudes towards animals. For example, people who are younger, female, highly educated, and live in urban areas show heightened levels of concern for animal welfare (Driscoll, 1992; Eldridge & Gluck, 1996; Erian & Phillips, 2017; Herzog, Betchart, & Pittman, 1991; Kendall, Lobao, & Sharp, 2006; Knight, Nunkoosing, A, & Cherryman, 2003).
In most developed countries such as Australia, higher welfare products mean increased production costs due to the allocation of more space per animal and greater care, and these increased costs or price premium are passed on to the consumer. Given this market-driven nature of animal welfare, improving the welfare of farmed animals above the minimum legal standards will rely, at least in part, on increased consumer demand for high welfare products (Vigors, 2018). Previous research has confirmed a willingness by consumers to pay premiums for farm animal welfare and higher welfare products (Bateman, Burgess, Hutchinson, & Matthews, 2008; Bennett, 1996, 1998; Bennett & Blaney, 2003; Lagerkvist & Hess, 2011; Napolitano, Braghieri, et al., 2007; Napolitano, Braghieri, et al., 2010; Napolitano, Caporale, Carlucci, & Monteleone, 2007; Napolitano, Girolami, & Braghieri, 2010; Seibert & Norwood, 2011; Tonsor & Wolf, 2011). For example, 34% of Australian respondents were willing to pay 5–10% more for animal products that met the Five Freedoms of animal welfare (Taylor & Signal, 2009).
When it comes to animal welfare, consumers are faced with a proliferation of new and unfamiliar on-package labels that are intended to address various aspects of farm animal welfare, for example cage-free, free-range, RSPCA Approved Farming, to name a few (Ingenbleek & Immink, 2011). The increasing distance between food consumption and food production for modern consumers means that most of the information consumers use to make decisions comes through labeling and initiatives outside the regulatory framework (Hepting, Jaffe, & Maciag, 2013). Labels have been shown to play a crucial role in driving more ethical purchasing decisions because they inform consumers about the product (Ingenbleek & Immink, 2011). However, much less is known about what features render animal welfare labels effective or ineffective. A US study reported that the average consumer was willing to pay about 20% more for pork and egg products that had mandatory labeling information confirming the absence of gestation crates for pigs and cages for laying hens (Tonsor & Wolf, 2011). Also, a recent study by Anderson and Barrett found that labels describing high welfare conditions alone might be enough to influence perceptions of taste, with people rating animal products labeled with “humane” as tastier than the same products bearing other labels (Anderson & Barrett, 2016).
Although consumers increasingly want to acquire animal-based products that have been produced humanely, when discussing consumer purchase intentions, we should first explore the very nature of human decision-making, which is thought to run counter to ethical intentions or, in this case, intentions to purchase higher welfare products (Ratner et al., 2008). According to the Heuristic-Systematic Model (Chaiken, 1980), people can process messages in one of two ways: heuristically or systematically. Heuristics involves short cuts in decision making, while systematic processing involves more thoughtful processing of the pros and cons of any available information when making decisions. As such, heuristic processing can compromise consumers’ ethical ideals, as more careful and logical thinking is generally needed to engage in ethical purchasing. Instead, when engaging in heuristic processing consumers tend to buy the products they always have bought or whatever is easiest, with little further consideration. Deciding to purchase high welfare products requires cognitive effort, time, money and consideration, which most consumers are not willing to invest (Ingenbleek et al., 2013). Due to people usually having limited time and ability to think carefully, decisions are more often than not formed in the more simplified manner using heuristic. Finally, consumers may consider animal welfare within the context of various other food attributes, such as food safety, health, taste and quality, and weighing-up the relative merits of these varying attributes can pose difficulties (Toma, Stott, Revoredo-Giha, & Kupiec-Teahan, 2012). Furthermore, consumers may perceive some of the industry-sourced information about welfare as being unreliable, for example, they often distrust claims for the production of eggs as being free-range (Toma et al., 2012). According to McEachern and Warnby (2008), consumer knowledge of and confidence in animal welfare labels, and the standards they are based on, influence purchase decisions. Moreover, Lusk (2010) found consumer demand for cage-free and organic eggs increased by 180% and 20%, respectively, in the months leading up to the landmark vote regarding Proposition 2 (a ban on cages in egg production in the US state of California), while demand for other types of eggs fell. This suggests that the increased information available and media attention surrounding Proposition 2 highlighted the issue and had a significant effect on consumer preferences for higher welfare eggs (Lusk, 2010).
Given Australia's growing concern for animal welfare, the current study aimed to investigate the role of package information on Australian consumers' preferences for high welfare products. In particular, it explored whether giving participants an animal welfare label alone or the same label with details about the animal welfare standards of that label influences purchasing intentions; whether demographic attributes and pro-welfare attitudes are associated with purchasing intentions; and finally, whether the labeling and attitudes towards animal welfare interact to increase intentions to purchase high welfare option.
Section snippets
The survey
A quantitative survey was piloted with a group of 12 participants and, based upon their feedback, was updated and emended. It was constructed in RedCap (https://projectredcap.org/) and was administered online for a period of approximately 9 months, from March 2018 to November 2018. It was voluntary and respondents had to be 18 years or older and were recruited across Australia through community announcements, newsletters, press releases and social media announcements. An article was also
Results
A total of 1612 participants completed the online survey, among whom there were 1150 females and 418 males (44 participants preferred not to disclose their sex or left the question blank) (see Table 3).
Discussion
The current study investigated Australian consumers' preferences for higher welfare products with independent on-package animal welfare labels. In particular, whether purchase intentions are driven by heuristic signals, in the form of on-package animal welfare labels, or descriptive cues presented as the provision of on-package animal welfare labels with additional details about the relevant conditions under which the animals were reared. In essence, the aim was to explore whether information
Limitations
The current study investigated attitudes to animal welfare and self-reported purchase intentions (not true purchase behaviours) which could be affected by what is referred to as social desirability bias, whereby participants overstate the importance they place on ethical issues because they consider such responses to be more socially acceptable (Auger & Devinney, 2007; Davies, Lee, & Ahonhhan, 2012) and therefore they may not translate to reality. It would be beneficial for future studies of
Acknowledgement
2016 RSPCA Australia Scholarship for Humane Animal Production Research.
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