consumer’s willingness to pay for indigenous meat products: the case of a Spanish sheep breed

European farmers of indigenous local breeds have benefited from European Union economic support in the past and it is forecast to continue being supported in the future. However, it is in the public debate that economic support cannot last forever. Then, for the long-run maintenance of indigenous local breeds to be possible, the derived meat products from these breeds should be demanded by consumers or at least by a group of local consumers. This is the aim of this paper, to study consumers’ demand for indigenous local meat products. In particular, to assess how much consumers are willing to pay for a Spanish lamb meat from an indigenous sheep breed (“Ojinegra de Teruel”). To do that, a non-hypothetical experimental auction with local consumers (those living in a medium-size town around 150 km the producing area of this meat) was used. Results indicated that consumers were willing to pay, on average, €0.45 (15% of the market price) more for the lamb meat with the “Ojinegra de Teruel” breed claim than for the one without breed indication (as it is now sold in the market). Then, local consumers clearly accept the differentiated meat through the indigenous breed indication. Then, producers in the area could have more opportunities to sell in the local market if they differentiate their meat using the indigenous “Ojinegra de Teruel” claim than using the undifferentiated strategy they are undertaken now. additional key words: differentiated; experimental auction; “Ojinegra de Teruel”; preferences. abbreviations used: OJITER (Ojinegra de Teruel); WTP (Willingness to Pay). authors’ contributions: Conceived, designed, performed the experiments and wrote the paper: AG and TdM. Analyzed the data, obtained funding and supervised the work: AG. citation: Gracia, A.; de-Magistris, T. (2016). Short communication: Consumer’s willingness to pay for indigenous meat products: The case of a Spanish sheep breed. Spanish Journal of Agricultural Research, Volume 14, Issue 2, e01SC01. http://dx.doi.org/10.5424/ sjar/2016142-8230. received: 29 Jun 2015. accepted: 13 May 2016 copyright © 2016 inia. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial (by-nc) Spain 3.0 Licence, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Funding: The authors received specific funding for this work from Instituto Nacional de Investigación y Tecnología Agraria y Alimentaria (INIA-Spanish Government), Project entitled “La diversificación de producciones como alternativa de sostenibilidad de las explotaciones de raza Ojinegra de Teruel” (PET2007-06-C03-01). competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. correspondence should be addressed to Azucena Gracia Royo: [email protected].