Behavior of consumers and willingness to pay for quality attributes of organic meat rabbit

The demand for meat products, particularly specialty value-added ones, is highly segmented among different types of consumers. In this research, consumer preferences for quality-related attributes (food safety, freshness, organic and price) for rabbit meat were analyzed to discover their potential market niche. Using data from households, obtained by personal interview with a randow sample of 197 people, was carried out a statistical descriptive and correlation analysis to identify potentially explanatory variables of the consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for the organic attribute. Preferences were measured using a five categories Likert scale. The most favorite attributes, in order of importance, were the organic, safety, freshness, and the price of meat. The "organic" attribute is highly preferred by 64 % of the sample, followed by safety. The reasons to prefer organic meat are health and social responsibility. The socio demographics variables schooling, household income from, knowledge about organic food, and the safety attribute were significant (P<0.05). This reveals the importance of income level and formal education in the consumer's decision of paying a premium for the organic attribute. The price premium that consumers would pay per kilogram of organic rabbit meat was 15 % of the average price ($13.50 more per kilogram) charged to consumers.