@inproceedings{HirschMeyerMassenetal.2017, author = {Darya Hirsch and Christian Meyer and Cristina Massen and Wiltrud Terlau}, title = {Well-informed Consumer? How do Different Consumer Groups Handle Online Information on German Animal Welfare Initiatives?}, series = {Deiters, Rickert et al. (Eds.): Proceedings of the 11th International European Forum on System Dynamics and Innovation in Food Networks. February 13-17, 2017, Innsbruck-Igls, Austria}, publisher = {Centma}, address = {Bonn}, issn = {2194-511X}, doi = {10.18461/pfsd.2017.1742}, url = {https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hbz:1044-opus-31792}, pages = {418 -- 423}, year = {2017}, abstract = {In January 2015, German trade and industry announced to support the national animal welfare initiative \"Initiative Tierwohl\" (ITW) which stands for a more sustainable and animal-friendly meat production. A web content analysis shows that the ITW initiative has been widely picked up and discussed by online media and that user comments are quite heterogeneous. The current study identifies different types of consumers through factor and cluster analysis and is based on an online survey as well as face-to-face interviews. According to our results, the identified consumer groups demonstrate a rather passive comment behaviour on the internet. In fact, the internet was hardly mentioned as an information source for meat production; consumers more frequently referred to brochures, leaflets and personal contacts with sales personnel.}, language = {en} }