Consumer perception of sustainable practices in dairy production

Simona Naspetti, Serena Mandolesi, Jeroen Buysse, Terhi Latvala, Phillipa Nicholas, Susanne Padel, Ellen J. Loo and Raffaele Zanoli ()
Additional contact information
Simona Naspetti: Università Politecnica delle Marche
Serena Mandolesi: Università Politecnica delle Marche
Jeroen Buysse: Ghent University
Terhi Latvala: Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke)
Phillipa Nicholas: Gogerddan Campus Aberystwyth University
Susanne Padel: Organic Research Centre
Ellen J. Loo: Ghent University

Agricultural and Food Economics, 2021, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-26

Abstract: Abstract Home-grown protein crops as an alternative to soya in dairy cattle meals, as well as other sustainable ethical-based practices, have been proposed to increase the sustainability of dairy production. Data on consumer acceptance of the three novel sustainable production strategies of ‘agroforestry’, ‘prolonged maternal feeding’ of young cattle and ‘alternative protein source’ were collected through an online survey on consumer in six European Union countries: Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Italy and the UK. Using Chen’s extended version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour model, the underlying model hypotheses on the attitudes and intentions of these consumers towards these production practices were tested, to establish the explanatory power of the model in the specific context of novel sustainable production strategies. Furthermore, the influence of gender and consumer ethical choices on their attitudes towards these innovative practices was also tested. These data show that ‘prolonged maternal feeding’ is the novel production practice that has the highest level of acceptance by consumers in all of these countries, with the least accepted practice as ‘alternative protein source’. Unexpectedly, increased availability of home-grown feed, which is grounded on both farmer and societal interests for higher input self-sufficiency and more sustainable production practices, was little appreciated by consumers, although their intentions appear to be dependent on their moral norms.

Keywords: Sustainable dairy farming; Animal welfare; Alternative feed; Organic and low-input farming; Consumer acceptance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1186/s40100-020-00175-z Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
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:spr:agfoec:v:9:y:2021:i:1:d:10.1186_s40100-020-00175-z

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... nomics/journal/40100

DOI: 10.1186/s40100-020-00175-z

Access Statistics for this article

Agricultural and Food Economics is currently edited by Alessandro Banterle, Liesbeth Dries, Andrea Marchini and Carlo Russo

More articles in Agricultural and Food Economics from Springer, Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().