IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bpj/bjafio/v23y2025i1p1-15n1004.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Animal Welfare Ballot Initiatives and the Vote-Buy Gap

Author

Listed:
  • Vukina Tomislav

    (Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA)

  • Oh Sohae Eve

    (Department of Dental Medicine, Jeonbuk National University, Jeonju, Republic of Korea)

  • Moschini GianCarlo

    (Department of Economics and Center for Agricultural and Rural Development, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA)

Abstract

We provide empirical evidence to explain the apparent discrepancy between consumption choices and voting outcomes for a recent high-profile animal welfare case: California’s ban of eggs produced with caged hens. The model juxtaposes the private good aspect of buying decisions with the public good aspect of voting, and yields testable propositions for the vote-buy gap. These implications are evaluated in a revealed-preferences setting using a novel combination of voting and egg-purchase data. Results show that the vote-buy gap depends on the egg price differential, and the distribution of consumers’ heterogeneous preference for animal welfare issues.

Suggested Citation

  • Vukina Tomislav & Oh Sohae Eve & Moschini GianCarlo, 2025. "Animal Welfare Ballot Initiatives and the Vote-Buy Gap," Journal of Agricultural & Food Industrial Organization, De Gruyter, vol. 23(1), pages 1-15.
    • Handle: RePEc:bpj:bjafio:v:23:y:2025:i:1:p:1-15:n:1004
    DOI: 10.1515/jafio-2024-0053
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/jafio-2024-0053
    Download Restriction: For access to full text, subscription to the journal or payment for the individual article is required.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/jafio-2024-0053?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    animal welfare; ballot initiatives; consumer heterogeneity; differentiated products; public goods; vote-buy gap;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D12 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Empirical Analysis
    • D72 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Political Processes: Rent-seeking, Lobbying, Elections, Legislatures, and Voting Behavior
    • Q18 - Agricultural and Natural Resource Economics; Environmental and Ecological Economics - - Agriculture - - - Agricultural Policy; Food Policy; Animal Welfare Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bpj:bjafio:v:23:y:2025:i:1:p:1-15:n:1004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.degruyter.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.