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Willingness to pay and moral stance: The case of farm animal welfare in Germany.

ABSTRACT: This study examines the impact of ethical attitude on the willingness to pay for farm animal welfare improvement in Germany. Little is known about the pluralism of moral attitudes that may exist behind farm animal welfare issues and its relationship to customers' willingness to pay for it. Via a large survey (n = 1334) we are able to identify different moral dimensions by employing validated scales. We find utilitarian alongside deontological attitudes as well as a mixture of both. Thus, presupposing a standard moral attitude is too simple. This has implications for decision-making on markets, since the implicit normative assumptions of a utilitarian position in economics has to be critically assessed. Furthermore, we asked for the willingness to pay for various aspects of farm animal welfare improvement. We find significant positive correlations between willingness to pay and environmental concern, altruism and less apathy. Measured in Euro, a higher environmental concern has the strongest effect on WTP for all five moral scales. Outliers with higher bids are willing to pay almost five times for any aspect of farm animal welfare than the rest of the sample. A more detailed analysis of outliers demonstrates that market-based approaches have restrictions in capturing certain moral values. Moreover, the motivations behind zero bids reveal that moral concerns outweigh indifference towards animal welfare by far. This has implications how policy can be designed to serve people's demand for higher animal welfare standards. Two other findings are of interest. First, we find a very high number of people assigning an intrinsic value to animals (90%). Second, zero bids and outlier treatment in WTP-studies deserves more careful consideration, since WTP-estimates are easily skewed by excluding these groups.

SUBMITTER: Frey UJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6091959 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Farm animal welfare is a major concern for society and food production. To more accurately evaluate animal farming in general and to avoid exposing farm animals to poor welfare situations, it is necessary to understand not only their behavioral but also their cognitive needs and capacities. Thus, general knowledge of how farm animals perceive and interact with their environment is of major importance for a range of stakeholders, from citizens to politicians to cognitive ethologists to philosophers. This review aims to outline the current state of farm animal cognition research and focuses on ungulate livestock species, such as cattle, horses, pigs and small ruminants, and reflects upon a defined set of cognitive capacities (physical cognition: categorization, numerical ability, object permanence, reasoning, tool use; social cognition: individual discrimination and recognition, communication with humans, social learning, attribution of attention, prosociality, fairness). We identify a lack of information on certain aspects of physico-cognitive capacities in most farm animal species, such as numerosity discrimination and object permanence. This leads to further questions on how livestock comprehend their physical environment and understand causal relationships. Increasing our knowledge in this area will facilitate efforts to adjust husbandry systems and enrichment items to meet the needs and preferences of farm animals. Research in the socio-cognitive domain indicates that ungulate livestock possess sophisticated mental capacities, such as the discrimination between, and recognition of, conspecifics as well as human handlers using multiple modalities. Livestock also react to very subtle behavioral cues of conspecifics and humans. These socio-cognitive capacities can impact human-animal interactions during management practices and introduce ethical considerations on how to treat livestock in general. We emphasize the importance of gaining a better understanding of how livestock species interact with their physical and social environments, as this information can improve housing and management conditions and can be used to evaluate the use and treatment of animals during production.

Project description:Prioritization of animal welfare issues can help identify which areas most require research funding and raise awareness of best practices. A modified Delphi method was used to obtain expert opinion on the highest priority welfare issues for UK farmed livestock. Fifty-eight UK-based experts were recruited onto the study, with a minimum of 3 years experience of working with either cattle, pigs, poultry, or small ruminants (12-16 experts per group). Experts were chosen to represent a broad range of opinions. Two rounds of surveys were conducted online using Online Survey, and the final round was an in-person workshop with 21 experts. In the first survey, experts were provided with a comprehensive list of species-specific welfare issues derived from the literature. Participants were asked to score each welfare issue, for (i) severity, (ii) duration, and (iii) prevalence on a 6-point Likert scale. The results of the first survey were reviewed and the welfare issues which scored a neutral-to-high response (scores 3-6) were carried forward. In round 2, participants were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the rankings that were made from the results of round 1. The final stage of the process was a workshop, which consisted of a combination of group exercises and discussions, to reach the final consensus. Welfare priority lists were divided into two categories: severity/duration, and prevalence, to identify the priority welfare issues affecting individual animals and the population, respectively. Across all farmed species common concerns were inadequate or inappropriate nutrition, inability of stockpeople to recognize or treat welfare issues (such as pain or behavioral problems), lameness, chronic or endemic health issues, euthanasia and mortality and morbidity of neonates. Specific concerns related to behavioral restriction and damaging or abnormal behavior in pigs, poultry and dairy animals, inadequate housing for pigs and poultry, consequences of breeding decisions in pigs and poultry, and lack of access to veterinary care in sheep and beef. This Delphi process resulted in consensus on the most significant welfare challenges faced by UK livestock species and can help to guide future research and education priority decisions.

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Willingness to pay and moral stance: The case of farm animal welfare in Germany.

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