On the consumer willingness to purchase foods of higher animal-welfare standards

Animal welfare is found to be a universal ethical and moral issue among consumers, and their concerns about animal welfare have grown substantially over the past decade. In line with this development, involved stakeholders in the food-supply chain have been considering ways to inform the general public about higher animal-welfare food products. Currently, the EU commission considers a revision of the EU legislation on animal welfare, which has an impact on the potential offering of food products to consumers. For stakeholders, it is of crucial interest to understand the (un)willingness of consumers to shift their purchase behaviours, and choose those food products that agree with the proposed upgraded EU animal-welfare standards. The aims of this study are (i) to identify and understand the main aspects of higher animal-welfare consumer purchasing behaviour, (ii) to identify possible intervening actions (for example, labelling) that can take these aspects into account, and (iii) to identify what type of policy making (for example, regulations or communication campaigns) can support these intervening actions. In doing so, we use two distinct, but related frameworks from recent scientific publications. To demonstrate the frameworks’ usefulness, we use them as a backbone for our discussion of the use of animal-welfare labelling. In this discussion, we relate existing challenges to components of the frameworks, and we show, in a real-life illustration, how the frameworks can be used to explain the over-time consumer consumption of animal-welfare products. In a second demonstration, we apply them to a practical example, in which we asked: are consumers in Europe willing to pay more for food products that agree with the proposed upgraded EU animal-welfare standards? The applications result in a number of insights that are underpinned by findings in existing literature and regards potential drivers related to motives, including self-interest (for example, a perceived higher product quality), social influence (for example, expected approval by peer groups), cognition (for example, improved streams of product information), affection (for example, less feeling of guilt), and tangibility (for example, clearer picture about the consequences of product choices). Subsequently, these aspects are related to combinations of possible intervening actions. We concluded that the combination of frameworks is useful in identifying potential drivers and barriers of the consumers’ willingness to choose food products with new animal-welfare standards, and in identifying ways in which intervention activities can take these drivers and barriers into account. Finally, it is argued that, although the combination of frameworks is complete on important issues, it does not provide predictions about the real-life effectiveness of specific combinations of intervention activities targeting specific types of consumers. Such a study warrants quantitative analyses of real-life consumer choice data.