According to the article The Impact of Food Prices on Consumption: A Systematic Review of Research on the Price Elasticity of Demand for Food, the elasticity for poultry in the U.S. is 0.68 (95% confidence interval is 0.44-0.92). This value is based on 23 estimates. Table 1 in the article contains elasticities of other animal products as well. But on a closer look this seems to not be the thing that you are looking for: “we sought to estimate the effects of price changes on consumer demand”.
In general, I would say that your friend is right that consuming less chicken might lead to less of a difference in supply than one would naively think, but it still leads to a difference. At least that’s my understanding. But I have a very shallow understanding of this topic.
Thanks Saulius—I think this is really interesting info.
However, I feel that this be misleading in that it overstates the case for vegetarianism over clean meat R&D, because what one is really interested in is meat or animal product elasticity. In other words, poultry elasticity understates the counterfactual where reduction of poultry supply due to someone’s vegetarianism increases the supply of other animal products.
I don’t quite understand this comment. I don’t think there was any discussion here about vegetarianism vs. clean meat R&D. Maybe you should clarify if it’s important :)
I was trying to make a point about the comparative effectiveness of two popular kinds of interventions in animal welfare: animal product reduction advocacy (e.g. leafletting, corporate campaigns etc.) vs. clean meat R&D.
The effectiveness of animal product reduction advocacy relies more heavily on the elasticity.
Poultry elasticity might be higher than the—harder to measure, more meaningful—animal product elasticity. For instance, reduction in demand for poultry might lower the price of feed further down in the supply chain—reducing the price and thus increasing the demand of other animal products.
Thus, using poultry elasticity as a parameter when evaluating animal product reduction advocacy interventions overstates its effectiveness (relative to clean meat R&D).
Thanks for finding this paper. But I think they are answering the question “If I change price, what happens to demand?”, while I am asking “If demand drops (me not buying any chicken), what happens to total quantity sold?”
According to the article The Impact of Food Prices on Consumption: A Systematic Review of Research on the Price Elasticity of Demand for Food, the elasticity for poultry in the U.S. is 0.68 (95% confidence interval is 0.44-0.92). This value is based on 23 estimates. Table 1 in the article contains elasticities of other animal products as well. But on a closer look this seems to not be the thing that you are looking for: “we sought to estimate the effects of price changes on consumer demand”.
In general, I would say that your friend is right that consuming less chicken might lead to less of a difference in supply than one would naively think, but it still leads to a difference. At least that’s my understanding. But I have a very shallow understanding of this topic.
Thanks Saulius—I think this is really interesting info.
However, I feel that this be misleading in that it overstates the case for vegetarianism over clean meat R&D, because what one is really interested in is meat or animal product elasticity. In other words, poultry elasticity understates the counterfactual where reduction of poultry supply due to someone’s vegetarianism increases the supply of other animal products.
I don’t quite understand this comment. I don’t think there was any discussion here about vegetarianism vs. clean meat R&D. Maybe you should clarify if it’s important :)
Sorry I was being unclear.
I was trying to make a point about the comparative effectiveness of two popular kinds of interventions in animal welfare: animal product reduction advocacy (e.g. leafletting, corporate campaigns etc.) vs. clean meat R&D.
The effectiveness of animal product reduction advocacy relies more heavily on the elasticity.
Poultry elasticity might be higher than the—harder to measure, more meaningful—animal product elasticity. For instance, reduction in demand for poultry might lower the price of feed further down in the supply chain—reducing the price and thus increasing the demand of other animal products.
Thus, using poultry elasticity as a parameter when evaluating animal product reduction advocacy interventions overstates its effectiveness (relative to clean meat R&D).
Thanks for finding this paper. But I think they are answering the question “If I change price, what happens to demand?”, while I am asking “If demand drops (me not buying any chicken), what happens to total quantity sold?”