I can't back this up with data, so this is just my opinion.

Economies of scale are better in almost every way, if the benefits of economies of scale are somewhat evenly distributed, and that the benefits don't come with significant negatives somewhere else.

However, most of the time, the majority of the benefits of economies of scale tend to go to the wealthy. The small amount of benefits that do go to consumers/people make them think that they are the beneficiaries, and often the societal cost is masked.