Consumer willingness to pay price premiums for credence attributes of livestock products – A meta-analysis

Livestock products, such as dairy and beef, are increasingly regarded as resource intensive and concerns are raised about animal welfare and environmental sustainability. As a result, consumer awareness of these issues has led to an increasing demand for products with high quality credence attributes (CAs) that cannot be directly experienced or identified. A number of empirical studies have attempted to estimate consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for CAs, which represents the additional value placed on the benefits that they derive from those products. However, there are significant differences in these WTP estimates, mainly because both consumers’ perceptions of CAs and the conditions of the studies vary. We conduct a meta-analysis to examine consumers’ WTP for different CAs of livestock products based on a systematic review of relevant studies. Meta-regression models are used to control for the heterogeneity of WTP estimates and investigate factors that affect the estimation of WTP. Overall 555 estimates derived from 94 papers reporting WTP are included in this study. Meta-regression results establish the presence of systematic WTP variation associated with types of products, CAs, and locations, though also indicate that WTP is subject to systematic variation associated with study methodology