Taiwanese Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Broiler Welfare Improvement

Abstract

In this study, we explored the willingness to pay (WTP) for broilers raised under the high welfare system. The interval data model and the ordered probit model were used to investigate the factors that affect consumers’ WTP for broiler meat produced by farm animal welfare (FAW), practice. Our results from both methods suggest that socioeconomic characteristics such as education level, income level, gender, and age significantly affect consumers’ WTP. The food safety concerns of consumers and perceived consumer effectiveness also influence consumers’ WTP. Using the interval data method, we computed the mean and median of the estimated WTP from our survey sample. The mean was 46.7745 New Taiwanese dollar per kilogram. The marginal effects of the different variables are also presented.

Keywords

• farm animal welfare (FAW), willingness to pay
• food safety concerns
• ethical concerns
• perceived consumer effectiveness
• broiler