Do consumers want public or private bodies to monitor animal friendly production and marketing schemes? And does trust matter?

Producing according to enhanced farm animal welfare (FAW) standards increases costs along the livestock value chain, especially for monitoring certified animal friendly products. In the choice between public or private bodies for carrying out and monitoring certification, consumer preferences and trust play a role. We explore this issue by applying logit analysis involving socio-economic and psychometric variables to survey data from Italy. Results identify marked consumer preferences for public bodies and trust in stakeholders a key determinant.

A critical account of the relationship between institutional trust, risk perception, and technology acceptance with an application to genetically modified foods

This article critically reflects on the widely held view of a causal chain with trust in public authorities impacting technology acceptance via perceived risk. It first puts forward conceptual reason against this view, as the presence of risk is a precondition for trust playing a role in decision making. Second, results from consumer surveys in Italy and Germany are presented that support the associationist model as counter hypothesis. In that view, trust and risk judgments are driven by and thus simply indicators of higher order attitudes toward a certain technology which determine acceptance instead. The implications of these findings are discussed.