eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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Growing concern over environmental impacts and other credence characteristics of food has resulted in increasing interest in the production methods and other attributes of meat products. According to previous studies especially food safety, domestic origin, organic production and animal welfare have been requested attributes of meat products. Several studies have highlighted the importance of allowing for consumer heterogeneity, but to the best of my knowledge there has been no research on the impact of the carbon footprint information on the choice of a meat product.

The aim of this thesis is to provide information on relative preferences of consumers for minced meat attributes, i.e. the product features that give them the greatest added value. To that end, the study examines whether the meat type (beef, pork, pork-beef), the method of production (conventional, organic, animal welfare-oriented and product safety and health-oriented production), the fat content of the product or the carbon footprint information have an impact on consumers’ choice of minced meat and whether these attributes have interaction effects on the choice. In addition, the heterogeneity of consumer preferences is assessed, in order to define possible consumer groups and to profile them based on their socio-demographic background and attitudes. Finally, this study produces relative willingness to pay estimates for particular products of interest in general and separately for the heterogeneous consumer classes.

The consumer preferences for minced meat attributes were measured through a choice experiment. The data were gathered with an online survey from 1623 consumers representative of Finnish Internet users. The choices were modelled using the conditional logit model and to allow for consumer heterogeneity the latent class model was used.

A low fat percentage was found to have generally a particularly positive effect on the choice of minced meat product. Among the methods of production, organic production had a larger positive effect on the choice compared to animal welfare-oriented as well as product safety and health-oriented production. Minced beef meat was preferred over both pork and mixed beef and pork meat. The carbon footprint had an impact on the meat type-specific consumer preferences: beef products have a larger carbon footprint than pork products and consequently their popularity decreased when the footprint information was presented to the consumers. Six heterogeneous consumer classes were identified from the data: price-conscious consumers (23% of the respondents), fat content-conscious (20%), concerned (17%), indifferent (17%) and beef-preferring consumers (13%), and finally a segment having highly positive preferences for responsible production methods (11%). The consumers were generally willing to pay more for a low fat content, but the relative willingness to pay estimates were largely dependent on the heterogeneous consumer groups. Consumer willingness to pay for carbon footprint information was not especially high, but the matter should be further examined in order to draw decisive conclusions.