Use and non-use values to explain farmers' motivation for the provision of animal welfare

Abstract

This paper examines how differences in motivation in terms of use and non-use values affect the choice of animal welfare improvement practices. The application is focused on Swedish dairy farmers’ preferences for different flooring systems’ attributes. Using multiple indicators and multiple causes and hybrid latent class models, the findings demonstrate that dairy farmers who favour flooring solutions that enhance farm animal welfare are motivated by a complex set of both use values relating to internal and external pressures and non-use values linked to animal freedom, ethical codes of farmers and building business-to-customer relationships. The findings imply that measures to stimulate more uptake of animal welfare improvement practices can be better targeted by using insights into motivational constructs of farmers and by adopting policy communication that captures the whole breadth of use and non-use motivational constructs held by farmers.

Keywords

animal welfare; choice experiment; latent variable; non-use values; use values

Published in

European Review of Agricultural Economics
2021, volume: 49, number: 2, pages: 499-525

SLU Authors

• Owusu Sekyere, Enoch

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    
  • University of the Free State

• Hansson, Helena

  • Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

• Telezhenko, Evgenij

  • Department of Biosystems and Technology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
    

UKÄ Subject classification

Economics
Animal and Dairy Science

Publication identifier

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/erae/jbab012

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/111250