Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on Consumer Food Safety Perceptions—A Choice-Based Willingness to Pay Study

• Published in: Sustainability
• Main Authors: Oliver Meixner, Felix Katt
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020
• Subjects: choice-based conjoint analysis (CBCA); willingness to pay (WTP); food safety; COVID-19; coronavirus; Environmental effects of industries and plants; TD194-195; Renewable energy sources; TJ807-830; Environmental sciences; GE1-350; Avian flu
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.3390/su12187270; https://doaj.org/article/465e52176799450c9b5a4fa090d25d67

As the COVID-19 pandemic brings about sudden change in societies across the globe and likely heralds the start of a recession, we examine the pandemic’s impact on consumer food safety perceptions. Due to its origin, COVID-19, likely spurring from an animal-to-human transmission in the context of a wet market, may impact consumer food perceptions in similar ways to the avian flu (H5N1) and the swine flu (H1N1). We examine this effect by studying preferences for beef meat in a consumer survey in the United States ( n = 999) using a choice-based experiment. We compare our findings to Lim et al. (2014), who elicited consumer beef willingness to pay (WTP). Additionally, we investigate the impact of the looming recession by analyzing several attributes and their effect on consumer preferences. Our findings suggest that food safety concerns have become more important. As a result, production standards and the country of origin have lost importance. Additionally, we show that the socioeconomic impact for some respondents impacts their shopping preferences. Finally, we outline potential areas for future research as well as managerial implications.