Valuation of food safety in meat - a review of stated preference studies

摘要

The present paper aims at providing an overview of the existing knowledge of consumer valuation of food safety and quality in meat. The paper reviews 35 stated preference studies. It was not possible to establish a clear ranking of meat characteristics due to large variations in the willingness-to-pay estimates across studies and very few studies that allowed within-study rankings. However, we found that product dependency and (self) selection biases are issues of particular relevance for understanding the variations in consumer valuation of food safety characteristics. Consequently, these topics are, especially, of concern when benefits are transferred among studies and across products. In addition, we found that improving the presentation of the information provided to respondents in the surveys is a simple first step towards improving the transparency (and the impact) of stated preference studies. Related to another dimension of information provision, we found only very few studies and no clearpicture of how consumer valuations of meat safety might be affected by information. There is a need for more stated preference studies of meat safety and quality that focus on ranking of attributes as well as on identifying the effect of information - and we suggest increased use of survey designs that allow within-sample comparisons.