Consumer Preferences regarding Country of Origin Labelling of Meat - FA0156

In this report we present our findings and conclusions on the economics of country of

origin food labels (CoOL) as they apply to meat sold to consumers in the UK. The

need for this research was motivated by recent EU legislation regarding how meat

products can and might be labelled with respect to CoOL. The main objectives of the

research were:

1. To review and synthesise the existing literature to identify and understand UK

consumer preferences regarding CoOL of meat products.

2. To design and implement a series of hypothetical choice experiments (CEs) to

ascertain consumer perception of the relative importance of different labelling

requirements in terms of average UK consumer willingness-to-pay (WTP).

3. To cover a broad range of meat products (i.e., unprocessed swine, sheep,

goat and poultry) in fresh, chilled, frozen format plus meat used as an

ingredient (including beef).

To address these objectives we undertook three specific but related pieces of

research:

1. We designed and conducted 12 hypothetical CEs via six online survey

instruments. To inform the design and implementation of our CEs we undertook an

extensive review of the antecedent literature. This review revealed an extensive set

of attributes to consider for use in our CEs. We then refined this set of attributes after

extensive discussions and a small pilot study. The scope and coverage of products

examined reflect the wide ranging scope of the legislation. For all 12 products we

estimated WTP for CoOL and various other product attributes.

2. We designed and implemented an additional hypothetical CE employing eyetracking (ET). The ET CE examined respondent attention and attendance to

attributes during the CE. The results from the ET were compared to the online

survey results yielding information in relation to how well respondents engaged with

the CEs, magnitude of estimates as well as consistency. The results from our ET CE

provide a means by which to assess the internal validity of the results provided by

our 12 online CEs.

3. We undertook an analysis of market transaction data; a revealed preference

study using data obtained from Kantar. This piece of analysis allowed us to see the

extent to which consumers have already responded to CoOL and if there exists a price premium being paid for CoOL in the UK. The results obtained from the Kantar

data allowed us to assess the external validity of our CE results.