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Determinants of Individual Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare-Friendly Food Products

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Abstract

Animal welfare involves societal and human values, ethical concerns and moral considerations since it incorporates the belief of what is right or what is wrong in animal treatment and care. This paper aims to ascertain whether the different dimensions of individual attitudes toward animal welfare in food choices may be characterized by general human values, as identified by Schwartz. For this purpose, an EU-wide survey was carried out, covering almost 2500 nationally representative individuals from five European countries. Compared with the previous literature this study shows a twofold novelty: (1) it develops a general framework to link individual enduring beliefs and attitudes toward animal welfare attributes in food choices; (2) the framework is analyzed within a broad-based cross-country study. Our empirical results prove that human values related to self-transcendence are strongly associated to overall animal welfare attitudes and especially to those explicitly related to food choices, while values related to the spheres of self-enhancement and conservatism are significantly associated to less sensitive attitudes to animal welfare. Moreover, our results appear to indicate that a determinant of animal welfarism in food choices is potentially associated to individual concerns regarding food safety issues.

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Notes

  1. While Belgium recorded pork consumption comparable to the European Union average (respectively 35.1 and 34.7 kg/capita/year), Germany and Poland registered higher pork consumption (respectively 53.5 and 51.2) than the European average. Finally, Greece showed a lower-than-average consumption. Pork consumption was calculated on the basis of FAOSTAT data for 2014.

  2. The comparative fit index (CFI) (Bentler 1990), the Tucker–Lewis Index (TLI) (Tucker and Lewis 1973), and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) (Steiger 1990) were used to assess how well the specified model fitted the data. The CFI and TLI assess the magnitude of fit between the sample and model covariance matrices with CFI estimating the relative reduction in the lack of fit and TLI estimating the relative improvement per degree of freedom. Cutoff values above 0.9 have been suggested to indicate “acceptable” fit and close to 0.95 as “adequate” fit for both CFI and TLI (Hu and Bentler 1999). The RMSEA assesses the degree of discrepancy between the sample and model covariance matrices and a cutoff value of 0.05 or less has been proposed as an indication of a reasonable error of approximation (Browne and Cudeck 1993).

  3. Since one hypothesis to be tested is that different spheres of animal welfarism (as measured by AT, AU and AW) are characterized by different sets of values, an empirical specification that allows cross-equation tests is needed. Multivariate regression produces the same estimates by using separate OLS regression analyses for each dependent variable but it allows formal testing of parameters across the equations

    $$ \left\{ {\begin{array}{*{20}l} {{\text{AT}}_{\text{i}} = {\mathbf{x}}_{\text{i}}^{\prime } {\varvec{\upbeta}}_{\text{at}} + {\mathbf{z}}_{\text{i}}^{\prime } {\varvec{\upgamma}}_{\text{at}} + {\text{e}}_{{1{\text{i}}}} } \hfill \\ {{\text{AU}}_{\text{i}} = {\mathbf{x}}_{\text{i}}^{\prime } {\varvec{\upbeta}}_{\text{au}} + {\mathbf{z}}_{\text{i}}^{\prime } {\varvec{\upgamma}}_{\text{au}} + {\text{e}}_{{2{\text{i}}}} } \hfill \\ {{\text{AW}}_{\text{i}} = {\mathbf{x}}_{\text{i}}^{\prime } {\varvec{\upbeta}}_{\text{aw}} + {\mathbf{z}}_{\text{i}}^{\prime } {\varvec{\upgamma}}_{\text{af}} + {\text{e}}_{{3{\text{i}}}} } \hfill \\ \end{array} } \right. $$

    where i stands for the i-th respondents; function x is a vector of traditional socio-demographic variables; and z is a vector of the ten PVs. Estimated coefficients in each equation β and γ are the estimated parameters.

    Statistical significance on the equality of γ parameters across the equations will provide the formal assessment on the structure and differences of the characterization of attitudes toward animal welfarism.

    $$ \begin{array}{*{20}c} {{\mathbf{H}}_{0}{:}\,{\varvec{\upgamma}}_{\text{at}} = {\varvec{\upgamma}}_{\text{au}} = {\varvec{\upgamma}}_{\text{af}} } \\ {{\mathbf{H}}_{1}{:}\,{\varvec{\upgamma}}_{\text{at}} \ne {\varvec{\upgamma}}_{\text{au}} \ne {\varvec{\upgamma}}_{\text{af}} } \\ \end{array} $$

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. AgEcon and Policy Group, Department of Agricultural Sciences, University of Naples Federico II, Via Università 96, 80055, Portici, NA, Italy

    L. Cembalo, F. Caracciolo, A. Lombardi, T. Del Giudice & G. Cicia

  2. MAPP Centre for Research on Customer Relations in the Food Sector, Aarhus Universitet, Aarhus, Denmark

    K. G. Grunert

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  1. L. Cembalo
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Correspondence to F. Caracciolo.

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Cembalo, L., Caracciolo, F., Lombardi, A. et al. Determinants of Individual Attitudes Toward Animal Welfare-Friendly Food Products. J Agric Environ Ethics 29, 237–254 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-015-9598-z

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