Consumers demand for products with animal welfare attributes: Evidence from homescan data for Scotland

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to assess Scottish consumers’ demand for animal welfare and organic pork. The paper also tried to answer the following questions: first, are animal-friendly pork and organic-pork complements or substitutes (competing)? Second, what is the relationship between pork products with different animal welfare labels (i.e. “freedom food” pork vs “specially selected pork”)? Third, does the demand for animal-friendly and organic pork vary with the level of deprivation of the area where consumers are living?

Design/methodology/approach

The dataset used in the analysis is the Kantar Worldpanel dataset for Scotland, which contains weekly data of food and drink purchases for consumption at home, covering the period 2006-2011. The panel is representative of the Scottish population and covers about 3,694 households. The linear version of the almost ideal demand system was estimated. Then, the own- and the cross-price elasticities as well as the expenditure elasticities for the 22 food categories and products were computed.

Findings

The results indicate that when the price of animal-friendly pork increases, consumers decrease their consumption of this product and substitute it by organic pork or regular pork, especially in the case of fresh pork, bacon and sausages. It was found that products with different animal welfare accreditation are substitutes in the eyes of Scottish consumers and are, therefore, competing for the market share of animal-friendly foods. The results also show that the demand for animal-friendly pork is more elastic in the most deprived areas in Scotland.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that estimates the demand for conventional, animal-friendly and organic pork using a scanner data in Scotland and controlling for the variation by area of deprivation.

Citation

Akaichi, F. and Revoredo-Giha, C. (2016), "Consumers demand for products with animal welfare attributes: Evidence from homescan data for Scotland", British Food Journal, Vol. 118 No. 7, pp. 1682-1711. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-09-2015-0321