EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Japan: consumers’ food safety perceptions and willingness to pay for tested beef

Jill McCluskey, Kristine Grimsrud, Hiromi Ouchi and Thomas Wahl

Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, 2005, vol. 49, issue 2, 13

Abstract: The discovery of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as ‘mad cow disease’, in Japan caused anxiety about consuming beef and beef products. As a result, there was a sudden fall in sales of beef that hurt the Japanese beef industry as well as major beef exporters to Japan. We analyse factors that affect Japanese consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) price premiums for BSE-tested beef and estimate the mean WTP for BSE-tested beef using data obtained from a consumer survey in Japan. A single-bounded dichotomous choice contingent valuation model is used to recover the premium amount. We find that attitudes to food safety, reduction in beef consumption following the BSE outbreak, and being female all have a statistically significant positive effect on the WTP for BSE-tested beef. Interestingly, demographic variables such as age and income do not affect the WTP, possibly indicating that the BSE scare similarly affected multiple segments of the population. In our sample, consumers are willing to pay a premium on average of greater than 50 per cent for BSE-tested beef.

Keywords: Demand and Price Analysis; Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/118583/files/j.1467-8489.2005.00282.x.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Japan: consumers' food safety perceptions and willingness to pay for tested beef (2005) Downloads
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aareaj:118583

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.118583

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics from Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().

 
Page updated 2025-03-19
Handle: RePEc:ags:aareaj:118583