Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Food labels, such as organic labels or fair-trade labels, have proliferated in recent years. Although consumers know such food labels, they often do not know the underlying criteria. Prior research has shown that showing food labels on the packaging increases willingness-to-pay. But it has not investigated whether communicating the underlying criteria would be even better. We use chocolate as an example and show, based on an experiment and a Conjoint Analysis conducted in Switzerland (n=293) that willingness-to-pay is significantly lower for a chocolate that shows food labels than for a chocolate that shows the underlying criteria. We identify “no forced or child labor” and “no pesticides” as the most important underlying criteria. Willingness-to-pay for “noforced or child labor” can be as high as 2.25 CHF. Furthermore, we show that manufacturers can mainly attract two segments with that practice that make up 65 percent of the market.
Authors: Verena Berger, Steffen Müller, Roger Seiler
Language: English
Topic: Organic Food and Agriculture
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2996688000