Acceptance And Willingness To Pay For Artificial Meat Among Chinese Consumers

With the increasing consumption of meat per capita,traditional animal husbandry gradually cannot meet consumers’ huge demand for meat.The Big food concept requires us to set up new ideas,ask for protein from plants,animals and microorganisms,develop biotechnology,and develop food resources in an all-round and multi-channel way.As a meat substitute,artificial meat offers the possibility to relieve the pressure of meat demand.Different from the traditional meat production process,artificial meat produced by the emerging biotechnology has environmental ethics,animal ethics,bioethics and other ethical attributes.In the face of ethical commodities,consumer ethics,as the value and moral guidance in the consumption process,will have an important impact on the acceptance degree and purchase intention of consumers.However,the specific impact of consumer ethics on the acceptance and willingness to pay of artificial meat is not clear at present,which needs to be verified.Based on 2,400 online survey data from 130 cities in 12 provinces(municipalities and autonomous regions)in 2022,this paper firstly constructed an ordered probit model to explore the influence of consumer ethics such as environmental ethics,animal ethics and bioethics on the acceptance of artificial meat,and conducted heterogeneity analysis and robustness test.Secondly,the selection experiment and mixed Logit model were used to predict consumers’ preference and willingness to pay for artificial meat products,and to explore the influence of information intervention,origin,consumer characteristics and other factors on artificial meat preference.Finally,OLS model was constructed to investigate the influence of consumer ethics on the willingness to pay for artificial meat,and the heterogeneity was analyzed,and the robustness was tested by instrumental variable method.The results show that:(1)Chinese consumers can correctly understand environmental ethics and animal ethics,but they hold a conservative attitude towards bioethics.(2)Consumers’ acceptance of artificial meat is at a medium level,and the acceptance of plant-based meat is higher than that of cultured meat.(3)Environmental ethics,animal ethics and bioethics have significant positive effects on the acceptance of related research,market sales and purchase intention of the two kinds of artificial meat.(4)Consumers’ preference and willingness to pay for artificial meat products are significantly lower than those for traditional meat.Information intervention,origin,consumer characteristics are correlated with preference and willingness to pay of artificial meat.(5)Consumer ethics affect consumers’ willingness to pay for artificial meat.Establishing environmental ethics,animal ethics awareness and open bioethical attitudes help increase consumers’ willingness to pay for artificial meat.Based on the above research results,in order to improve consumers’ attitude towards artificial meat and relieve the pressure of meat supply,the following suggestions are put forward:(1)Attach importance to the education of the public on consumption ethics,and advocate the social fashion of "environmental protection,animal protection,tolerance and openness".(2)Strengthen the encouragement,support,management and supervision of the artificial meat industry,and promote the establishment of China’s local artificial meat enterprise matrix.(3)Strengthen the publicity and promotion of artificial meat products,improve the social familiarity and awareness of artificial meat,and create a good marketing environment...