Consumers’ willingness to pay towards food safety: The case of meat consumption

This study is to determine consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for food safety with reference to meat consumption. A total of 3,145 respondents were interviewed for this purpose. The contingent valuation method (CVM) was used to determine consumers’ WTP for the consumption of meat. A logit and probit model was used to estimate the premium that consumers are willing to pay for meat. The results indicated that the important factors that influenced as well as determined the amount of premium that a consumer was willing to pay for meat are gender, age, marital status, household size and income, price levels, and number of children. Based on this study, it was found that the demand and consumption of meat was still high despite of the food scare incidents in the country recently. However, many Malaysian consumers are becoming more vigilant when buying meat due to concern on health and diet. This trend will certainly have effects on the present market of meat. Hence, to ensure a better development of the meat market, there is a need to formulate proper standards, policies and promotion programmes for meat safety, and to step up the efforts of Research and Development (R&D) in improving the production technologies and food safety systems for meat.