Consumer preferences for organic, animal welfare-friendly, and locally produced meat in workplace canteens: Results of a discrete choice experiment in Germany

Abstract

Although Germany is one of the biggest markets for organic food, this holds true only for the retail sector, while the sales share of organic food in the country's out-of-home consumption sector remains remarkably low. Since workplace canteens constitute a major subsector within Germany's out-of-home consumption sector, increasing the consumption of organic food in canteens would help contribute to more sustainable agricultural and food systems. To inform future efforts aimed at realising this potential, we conducted an online choice experiment with 834 regular canteen customers in Germany to identify their preferences for dishes with meat from organic, animal welfare-friendly, and local production. Data analysis using mixed logit models revealed that a label for organic production and a label for higher animal welfare standards had significant positive effects on participants' choices of meat dishes. Although these labels had considerably less influence on choices than the dishes themselves and their prices, our results show participants were willing to pay moderately higher prices for canteen dishes with these labels. By contrast, the effects of a label indicating local origin and a label marked “top-rated dish by our guests” (representing a descriptive social norm) were only significant in the case of single dishes. We outline several policy approaches to increase the share of more sustainably produced food in workplace canteens.