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Defining and measuring farmers’ attitudes to farm animal welfare

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2023

H Hansson  and
CJ Lagerkvist
H Hansson*
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, PO Box 7013, SE-75007 Uppsala, Sweden
CJ Lagerkvist
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, PO Box 7013, SE-75007 Uppsala, Sweden
*
* Contact for correspondence and requests for reprints: Helena.Hansson@slu.se
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Abstract

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Identifying farmers’ attitudes to farm animal welfare (FAW) is an important step in determining farmers’ efforts to improve FAW, knowledge of which is of particular importance for understanding how the living conditions of production animals are determined. This study developed a hypothetical model of farmers’ attitudes to FAW, including the antecedents of these attitudes and possible influences on FAW-related behaviour. Two models for empirical measurement of attitudes, namely formative and reflective models, were also evaluated and compared. The results suggested that choice of measurement model considerably influences conceptualisation of attitudes and that there may be considerable model misspecifications in previous literature relating to farmers’ FAW attitudes. Existing literature on farmers’ FAW attitudes was reviewed with the aim of providing a preliminary indication of the coverage of farmers’ FAW attitudes. A need for future research related to farmers’ attitudes to FAW was identified.

Keywords

animal welfareattitudesfactor analysisfarmersmeasurement modelspsychometrics
Type
Research Article
Information
Animal Welfare , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , February 2014 , pp. 47 - 56
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial reuse or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Universities Federation for Animal Welfare

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