Concern for animals, other farmers, or oneself? Assessing farmers’ support for a policy to improve animal welfare

October 2, 2022

American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 1–25, 2022.

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Public acceptance of farming practices relating to animal welfare is becoming increasingly important for dairy farmers. In this study, we assess dairy farmers’ willingness to pay to support a policy aimed at improving calf welfare and link this to farmers’ social preferences. We conceptualize the farmer’s decision into private reasons and motivations to improve animal welfare or industry reputation. Our data come from a survey with over 400 Irish dairy farmers that included an experimental component. Specifically, we utilized a contingent valuation referendum method to elicit farmers’ willingness to pay. We also used a financially incentivized social value orientation scale based on competitive, individualistic, prosocial, and altruistic preferences. Our findings indicate that most farmers are supportive of a policy scheme to improve animal welfare, and higher social value orientation (i.e. more altruistic preferences) is positively associated with higher willingness to pay. More detailed analysis suggests that industry concern is associated with more altruistic preferences but not concern for animal welfare. Our findings have important policy implications as we show that the majority of farmers are willing to financially support the implementation of a policy that can help to prevent public bads.

Author(s)
Doris Läpple

Publication Details

Publisher

Wiley

Date of Publication

October 2, 2022

ESRI Series

Journal Article

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This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. © 2022 The Authors. American Journal of Agricultural Economics published by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of Agricultural & Applied Economics Association.