Consumer willingness to pay for farm animal welfare: mobile abattoirs versus transportation to slaughter

Consumer preferences and willingness-to-pay ( WTP) for certain non-market food process attributes were investigated using a choice experiment. Swedish consumers were found to be willing to pay a price premium for the use of mobile abattoirs for cattle but not for broilers. We used two different survey versions, with and without an opt-out alternative. There is no evidence that omission of the opt-out alternative leads to biased choices. In addition, respondents who chose to opt-out were no different from those making trade-offs between attributes. The inclusion of an opt-out alternative has no significant effect on the marginal WTP. Based on estimated distributions of WTP and available cost estimates, the market share for mobile abattoirs is predicted. Here we do find differences between the two survey versions: the version with an opt-out alternative revealed greater unobserved heterogeneity.