Animal welfare has priority: Swiss consumers’ preferences for animal welfare, greenhouse gas reductions and other sustainability improvements in dairy products

• We assessed dairy consumers’ preferences for animal welfare improvements, GHG reductions, organic and local production. • Consumers show strong preferences for animal welfare improvements. • Consumers reject measures to reduce GHG at animal welfare’s expense. • WTP particularly high for a change from tethered to spacious loose housing. • Animal welfare improvements and communication crucial for producers and politicians. Animal welfare is at the forefront of the debate on sustainable food systems. However, animal welfare improvements often imply higher costs for producers. We explored whether Swiss consumers are willing to contribute monetarily to such improvements through an increase in prices of butter or milk. Based on a discrete choice experiment with 986 Swiss consumers, we investigated preferences for two animal welfare improvements in the dairy industry – loose housing and farm killing – as well as for organic production, origin of product, and greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions. Furthermore, we investigated how consumers perceive a potential conflict between GHG reductions and animal welfare concerns. Half of our sample faced increases in milk prices; the other half faced increases in butter prices. Findings indicate that animal welfare is of higher importance to consumers when compared to the other attributes under analysis. Consumers oppose GHG reductions associated with deteriorations in animal welfare and are willing to pay for improvements in housing conditions and a less stressful killing of the animals. Improvements in animal welfare could be crucial for dairy industry actors and provide strong arguments in communicating benefits of dairy products to consumers.