Perceptions and Attitudes Towards Farm Animal Welfare and Willingness to Pay for Welfare Friendly Meat Products among Students in Universiti Malaysia Kelantan

Malaysians consumed 46.5 kg poultry, 6 kg pork, 4.8 kg beef and 1 kg sheep with per capita in 2017. As the standard of living and education level of consumers increased, so
does the concerns and awareness about farm animal welfare which have led to an increase in the availability of welfare friendly meat products (WFP) in the market, but little is
known about how much more they are willing to pay (WTP) for WFP or about their buying trends specifically in Malaysia. The objectives of this study are to identify the perceptions and attitudes of consumers in Universiti Malaysia Kelantan towards farm animal welfare as well as to compare consumers’ attitude towards farm animal welfare between different types of gender, faculty and religion. This study also focused on level of knowledge of consumers towards welfare friendly product (WFP) and consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) more for animal friendly products. Purposive sampling has
been used in this survey with 60 students were chosen as respondents, but only 57 questionnaires accepted for this study as the other 3 were considered unusable, thus
rejected. This research found that consumers in Malaysia have an overwhelmingly (86%) positive attitude towards WFP, even outdone other European countries such as Latvia and
Spain, even though they have relatively low knowledge about the real situation of farm animal welfare in the country. In regard to WTP, 10.5% of the consumers are ready to chip more than 10% of original price to purchase WFP. The respondents also show very positive empathy not only on animal welfare but also farmers who are willing to invest more in ensuring animal welfare on their establishment. Since the number of respondents are quite small, it is suggested that future research should widen the sampling frame to cover more Malaysian in heterogeneous demographic.