The role of ethical orientation in animal welfare choice behaviour: A segmentation study

Consumers are becoming more and more conscious about their consumption choices, demanding more sustainable, healthy and fair options. Meat consumption especially is under scrutiny for environmental as well as ethical reasons. We develop a set of items to measure ethical orientation and apply it to consumers’ choices of meat products with 3000 consumers across six European countries (Denmark, Germany, Spain, Poland, Netherlands, Italy). We find consumer preferences to be similar across countries, with two thirds of consumers showing a preference for animal welfare attributes, especially outdoor access. Consumer segments can be differentiated based on their degree of ethical orientation, environmental concern, level of trust in the food system and price sensitivity. Ethical orientation differentiates between consumers’ self-reported welfare meat purchases. Our results contribute to the literature on consumer behavior regarding farm animal welfare across different meat product and countries.