Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Economics Research Institute Study Paper

Volume

7

Publisher

Utah State University Department of Economics

Publication Date

2002

Rights

Copyright for this work is held by the author. Transmission or reproduction of materials protected by copyright beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners. Works not in the public domain cannot be commercially exploited without permission of the copyright owner. Responsibility for any use rests exclusively with the user. For more information contact the Institutional Repository Librarian at digitalcommons@usu.edu.

First Page

1

Last Page

17

Abstract

This article reports the results from a series of laboratory auction markets in which consumers bid on meat characteristics. The characteristics examined include meat traceability (i.e., the ability to trace the retail meat back to the farm or animal or origin), transparency (e.g., knowing that the meat was produced without growth hormones, or knowing the animal was humanely treated), and assurances (e.g., extra meat safety assurances). This laboratory study provides non-hypothetical bid data on U.S. consumer preferences for traceability, transparency, and assurances (TTA) in red meat at a time when the U.S. currently lags other countries in development ofTTA meat systems. Our results suggest that U.S. consumers would be willing to pay for such TT A meat characteristics, and the magnitude of the consumer bids suggest a likely profitable market for development of U.S. TT A systems.

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