More Than Meets the Taste: How Poultry Production Practice Labels Shape Consumer Perceptions and Willingness to Pay

• Gabriela Sarbello, Environmental and Resource Economics, University of Delaware

• Kofi Britwum, Applied Economics and Statistics, University of Delaware

     Chicken is the most widely consumed meat in the United States, and to gather information on products, consumers commonly rely on non-sensory cues such as production labels to infer healthfulness, product quality, and ethical attributes. Before consumption, consumers read the label and, drawing on their past experiences, form expectations about what they are about to eat. According to the Affective Expectation Model, expectations can assimilate subsequent sensory experiences. Using chicken breast, this study examined the influence of poultry production practice labels (pasture-raised, no-antibiotics-ever, conventional, and organic) on sensory perceptions. Participants in a laboratory experiment (N = 269) at the Center for Experimental and Applied Economics sampled labeled and unlabeled pieces of cooked chicken breast to complete sensory ratings of juiciness, flavor, and tenderness, followed by an overall quality rating. During the revealed condition, participants were randomly assigned to an information treatment, in which information describing each production method was presented before tasting the labeled sample.

     Additionally, we used the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) mechanism to determine willingness to pay (WTP). We examined whether knowledge of poultry production practices changes consumers’ sensory perceptions and WTP after tasting, relative to evaluations made under blind conditions. Under blind conditions, conventional chicken received the highest mean ratings across all sensory attributes and WTP among the four production methods. Results from Wilcoxon signed-rank tests indicated that revealing production type significantly influenced consumer evaluations, while the information treatments had no significant effect on sensory ratings or WTP. The conventional label decreased sensory ratings and WTP, whereas the Organic, Pasture-Raised, and No-Antibiotics-Ever labels increased flavor, WTP, and overall quality relative to blind evaluations. These findings align with expectation-driven assimilation, implying that labeling may have a greater impact on sensory experiences than a product’s intrinsic quality and highlighting the importance of labeling in consumer communication tactics.