How do you like your meat? Investigating preferences for meat credence factors in Australia

Meat production is a major agricultural sector in Australia. The beef industry is especially important in regions like Central Queensland, where it contributes over AU$1 billion per annum to the economy. Systems such as “Meat Standards Australia” have been developed to classify meat by various quality standards and provide better information and consistency to consumers. There is, however, rapid growth in consumer demand for information about other aspects of meat production, such as health, animal welfare, and environmental impacts, which cannot be assessed through objective measures. Concerns about these types of factors, named credence factors, are beginning to have major impacts on meat purchasing and eating behaviour. This study explores the influence of credence factors on meat consumption behaviour in Australia. We conduct a discrete choice experiment about meat preferences, with a specific focus on quality, fat content, animal welfare, carbon footprint and production method. Twelve-hundred respondents from all over Australia are interviewed using an online survey. Four types of meat are investigated: beef, chicken, lamb, and pork. Four types of cuts are also examined for each meat type. Each respondent is allocated randomly to one of the four meat types and asked to choose their preferred cut. Respondents’ willingness-to-pay for meat cuts and credence factors are elicited using a mixed logit model to account for preference heterogeneity among respondents. When pooling results for the four meat types together, we observe that all meat cuts are preferred over the option of buying none. Superior quality is generally appreciated by consumers. Fat content is perceived negatively by consumers, as are intensive production methods that jeopardise animal welfare. Organic and hormone-free meats are also preferred over meat produced via conventional methods. Environmental impact, including the carbon footprint of production, however, does not appear to be significant. Preferences for each meat type are also explored using sub-samples. For beef, results remain similar to the pooled model, except for quality which is no longer significant. One possible explanation is that beef quality in Australia is generally high, so that consumers do not actively pick superior quality beef over budget one. For chicken, preferences are similar to the pooled model, but it is the only group where preferences for each cut are clearly differentiated. Breasts are the favourite cut, followed by chicken roast, chicken pieces (e.g. wings), and mince. Lamb preferences are similar to the pooled model. Finally, pork preferences slightly differ from the rest. Quality becomes important in this group, possibly related to a traditional (and unjustified) fear of sanitary issues with pork. On the contrary, environmental impact and production method (e.g. organic) are not significant, perhaps because pork consumers consider these aspects as secondary to price and other credence factors. This suggests that trade-offs may exist between credence factors. The possible implications of our results to the meat industry are discussed in further details in the final section of the paper.