Positive and negative information effects on consumer preferences for lab grown meat

Abstract

We examine the effect of information framing on consumers’ preferences for In-vitro (or lab grown) meat (IVM). Our choice experiment uses eight choice tasks that vary across five attributes: production method (IVM or conventional), carbon trust label, organic label, animal welfare label, and price. We investigate four information treatments: 1) neutral (baseline), 2) positive, 3) negative, and 4) both positive and negative combined. Negative information framing leads consumers to require the largest discount to accept IVM while positive information significantly reduces the discount required. Without positive information, food retailers should expect to offer steep discounts to attract customers to IVM.