IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/agribz/v40y2024i1p70-92.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Killing the sacred dairy cow? Consumer preferences for plant‐based milk alternatives

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Slade
  • Mila Markevych

Abstract

We examine the relationship between demand for plant‐based milk alternatives and dairy milk using data from a survey and a discrete choice experiment completed by 902 Canadians. Our survey results show that most individuals who drink milk alternatives also consume dairy milk, and preferences for milk alternatives vary across consumption contexts. Using our experimental data, we estimate consumer preferences via a mixed logit model. These preferences are then used to calculate a set of price elasticities and to predict market shares for dairy milk in counterfactual simulations that exclude select milk alternatives. Although the elasticity of dairy milk with respect to the price of milk alternatives is relatively low, we predict that between 57% and 83% of respondents who purchase milk alternatives would have purchased dairy milk if milk alternatives were not available, depending on the counterfactual. We also show that preferences for milk alternatives are linked to age and food values. Finally, we use our experiment to test the impact of additional information about the impact of dairy milk on animal welfare, the environment, and nutrition on preferences for milk alternatives. The treatment effects are generally statistically insignificant. [EconLit Citations: L66, Q18, D12]

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Slade & Mila Markevych, 2024. "Killing the sacred dairy cow? Consumer preferences for plant‐based milk alternatives," Agribusiness, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(1), pages 70-92, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:agribz:v:40:y:2024:i:1:p:70-92
    DOI: 10.1002/agr.21833
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/agr.21833
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/agr.21833?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gould, Brian W., 1996. "Factors Affecting U.S. Demand For Reduced-Fat Fluid Milk," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 21(01), pages 1-14, July.
    2. Bonnet, Céline & Bouamra-Mechemache, Zohra & Corre, Tifenn, 2018. "An Environmental Tax Towards More Sustainable Food: Empirical Evidence of the Consumption of Animal Products in France," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 48-61.
    3. Schmit, Todd M. & Dong, Diansheng & Chung, Chanjin & Kaiser, Harry M. & Gould, Brian W., 2002. "Identifying The Effects Of Generic Advertising On The Household Demand For Fluid Milk And Cheese: A Two-Step Panel Data Approach," Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Western Agricultural Economics Association, vol. 27(01), pages 1-22, July.
    4. Daniel McFadden & Kenneth Train, 2000. "Mixed MNL models for discrete response," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 15(5), pages 447-470.
    5. Hess, Stephane & Palma, David, 2019. "Apollo: A flexible, powerful and customisable freeware package for choice model estimation and application," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 1-1.
    6. Patrick Schenk & Jörg Rössel & Manuel Scholz, 2018. "Motivations and Constraints of Meat Avoidance," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(11), pages 1-19, October.
    7. Dharmasena, Senarath & Capps, Oral, Jr., 2014. "Unraveling Demand for Dairy-Alternative Beverages in the United States: The Case of Soymilk," Agricultural and Resource Economics Review, Northeastern Agricultural and Resource Economics Association, vol. 43(01), pages 1-18, April.
    8. Celine Bonnet & Zohra Bouamra-Mechemache & Tifenn Corre, 2018. "An environmental tax towards more sustainable food: empirical evidence of the consumption of animal products in France," Post-Print hal-02626207, HAL.
    9. Jayson L. Lusk & Glynn T. Tonsor, 2016. "How Meat Demand Elasticities Vary with Price, Income, and Product Category," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 38(4), pages 673-711.
    10. Karl Meilke & Rakhal Sarker & Danny Roy, 1998. "The Potential for Increased Trade in Milk and Dairy Products between Canada and the United States under Trade Liberalization," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 46(2), pages 149-169, July.
    11. Copeland, Alicia & Dharmasena, Senarath, 2016. "Impact of Increasing Demand for Dairy Alternative Beverages on Dairy Farmer Welfare in the United States," 2016 Annual Meeting, February 6-9, 2016, San Antonio, Texas 230044, Southern Agricultural Economics Association.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Staudigel, Matthias & Oehlmann, Malte & Roosen, Jutta, 2024. "Demand effects of unilateral versus industry-wide sugar reduction scenarios," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    2. Zhaoxin Liu & Erik Ansink, 2024. "Price elasticities of meat, fish and plant-based meat substitutes: evidence from store-level Dutch supermarket scanner data," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 24-046/VIII, Tinbergen Institute.
    3. Isler, Cassiano Augusto & Blumenfeld, Marcelo & Caldeira, Gabriel Pereira & Roberts, Clive, 2024. "Long-Distance railway mode choice in Brazil: Evidence from a discrete choice experiment," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C).
    4. Bazoche, Pascale & Guinet, Nicolas & Poret, Sylvaine & Teyssier, Sabrina, 2023. "Does the provision of information increase the substitution of animal proteins with plant-based proteins? An experimental investigation into consumer choices," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 116(C).
    5. Le Goff, Alix & Monchambert, Guillaume & Raux, Charles, 2022. "Are solo driving commuters ready to switch to carpool? Heterogeneity of preferences in Lyon's urban area," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 27-39.
    6. Tinessa, Fiore & Marzano, Vittorio & Papola, Andrea, 2020. "Mixing distributions of tastes with a Combination of Nested Logit (CoNL) kernel: Formulation and performance analysis," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 141(C), pages 1-23.
    7. Davis, Christopher G. & Blayney, Donald P. & Cooper, Joseph C. & Yen, Steven T., 2009. "An Analysis of Demand Elasticities for Fluid Milk Products in the U.S," 2009 Conference, August 16-22, 2009, Beijing, China 51791, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    8. Poudel, Niranjan & Singleton, Patrick A., 2024. "Willingness to pay for changes in travel time and work time: A stated choice experiment of US commuters," Research in Transportation Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C).
    9. Gabriel Nova & Sander van Cranenburgh & Stephane Hess, 2024. "Understanding the decision-making process of choice modellers," Papers 2411.01704, arXiv.org.
    10. Capps, Jr., Oral J. & Gao, Long, 2023. "A Comparison of Demand System Models Peculiar to a Granular Array of Dairy Products," Journal of Food Distribution Research, Food Distribution Research Society, vol. 54(03), November.
    11. Luisa Fernanda Eusse-Villa & Cristiano Franceschinis & Mara Thiene & Jürgen Meyerhoff & Alex McBratney & Damien Field, 2021. "Attitudes and Preferences towards Soil-Based Ecosystem Services: How Do They Vary across Space?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(16), pages 1-19, August.
    12. Cuma Akbay & Gulgun Yildiz Tiryaki, 2008. "Unpacked and packed fluid milk consumption patterns and preferences in Turkey," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 38(1), pages 9-20, January.
    13. Ogoudélé S. Codjo & Alvaro Durand‐Morat & Grant H. West & Lawton Lanier Nalley & Rodolfo M. Nayga & Eric J. Wailes, 2021. "Estimating demand elasticities for rice in Benin," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 52(2), pages 343-361, March.
    14. Wisdom Dogbe & Yihan Wang & Cesar Revoredo-Giha, 2024. "Nutritional implications of substituting plant-based proteins for meat: evidence from home scan data," Agricultural and Food Economics, Springer;Italian Society of Agricultural Economics (SIDEA), vol. 12(1), pages 1-26, December.
    15. Schrieks, Teun & Botzen, W.J. Wouter & Haer, Toon & Aerts, Jeroen C.J.H., 2025. "Preferences for drought risk adaptation support in Kenya: Evidence from a discrete choice experiment and three decision-making theories," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).
    16. Andersson, Henrik & Ouvrard, Benjamin, 2024. "Not on my plate! Using mental accounting to promote meat substitutes," TSE Working Papers 24-1547, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    17. Nadeem Ul Haque & Faheem Jehangir Khan (ed.), 2022. "RASTA Local Research, Local Solutions: Urban Development, Volume II," PIDE Books, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, number 2022:10.
    18. Youssef M Aboutaleb & Mazen Danaf & Yifei Xie & Moshe Ben-Akiva, 2020. "Sparse Covariance Estimation in Logit Mixture Models," Papers 2001.05034, arXiv.org.
    19. Molloy, Joseph & Becker, Felix & Schmid, Basil & Axhausen, Kay W., 2021. "mixl: An open-source R package for estimating complex choice models on large datasets," Journal of choice modelling, Elsevier, vol. 39(C).
    20. Franziska Funke & Linus Mattauch & Inge van den Bijgaart & H. Charles J. Godfray & Cameron Hepburn & David Klenert & Marco Springmann & Nicolas Treich, 2022. "Toward Optimal Meat Pricing: Is It Time to Tax Meat Consumption?," Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 16(2), pages 219-240.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:agribz:v:40:y:2024:i:1:p:70-92. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1520-6297 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.