Animal welfare is a stronger determinant of public support for meat taxation than climate change mitigation in Germany

A tax on meat could help address the climate impact and animal welfare issues associated with the production of meat. Through a referendum choice experiment with more than 2,800 German citizens, we elicited support for a tax on meat by varying the following tax attributes: level and differentiation thereof, justification and salience of behavioural effects. Only at the lowest tax level tested do all tax variants receive support from most voters. Support is generally stronger if the tax is justified by animal welfare rather than climate change mitigation. Differentiated taxes that link the tax rate to the harmfulness of the product do not receive higher support than a uniform tax; this indifference is not driven by a failure to anticipate the differential impacts on consumption. While the introduction of meat taxation remains politically challenging, our results underscore the need for policymakers to clearly communicate underlying reasons for the tax and its intended behavioural effect.


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Policy information about availability of computer code Data collection The data was collected in collaboration with professional panel provider respondi AG. respondi selected respondents from its panel according to quotas to match the German adult population in terms of age, sex and region of living on a federal state level. Respondents were then forwarded to the main survey that was programmed by us with Lighthouse Studio 9.11.0 by Sawtooth Software and hosted on Sawtooth Software server.

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The study is a quantitative online survey, including a referendum choice experiment, among German adult citizens.

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The research sample consists of participants representative for the German adult population in terms of age (18-74 years of age), sex (female, male) and region of living on a federal state level. The requirement of the sample to be representative was chosen to increase external validity of results since in a referendum, as described in our experiment, the German adult population could participate. Data for the quotas are from the Federal Statistical Office of Germany for December 2020. A German sample was chosen as the study among others considers an animal welfare label already applied in Germany and current political discussions on the introduction of an animal welfare tax in Germany. In addition, we set soft quotas for education and net household income to make sure that the sample is not skewed in these regards.

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