Consumers’ willingness to pay for plants protected by beneficial insects—Evidence from two stated-choice experiments with different subject pools

Abstract

1Consumers' willingness to pay Consumers' willingness to pay for plants protected by beneficial insects-Evidence from two stated-choice experiments with different subject pools AbstractWe investigate consumers' willingness to pay for plants protected by beneficial insects and those protected by pesticides, respectively, as well as the influence of message framing on willingness to pay. We use basil, heather, and orchids as experimental objects and find evidence from two experiments that consumers prefer plants protected by beneficial insects. Moreover, we find that message framing affects consumers' willingness to pay, where gain framing produces greater overall willingness to pay. To check for the robustness of our results, we implemented instruments to mitigate concerns for social desirability and hypothetical bias, finding that our results are robust in terms of our key findings. This is the first comprehensive experimental study specifically on consumer's willingness to pay for plants protected by beneficial insects. Our findings are also valuable for practitioners, as the use of beneficial insects in under-glass production systems is already common. Following our results, this information could be successfully used for marketing purposes.

Plant protection practices: how do risk perception, subjective and objective knowledge influence the preference of German consumers

“…Our result that the use of beneficial insects, is the most preferred plant protection practice (Figure 3), is in line with results of Lehberger and Gr€ uner (2020) and Grygorczyk et al (2014), who report a preference among the general public in Germany and Canada for biological control over traditional pesticides.…”

“…Surveys from the EU conclude that organic food is preferable to nonorganic food (Meyerding et al, 2019), and the production of organic food without synthetic pesticides is a main motivator of consumption (Aertsens et al, 2011). Regarding the use of beneficial insects, Lehberger and Gr€ uner (2020) find evidence that German consumers prefer edible and inedible plants that beneficial insects protected, over those protected by pesticides. This agrees with findings from the USA, where Wollaeger et al (2015) found that consumers prefer floricultural crops labeled with "use of beneficial insects" over those labeled with "traditional insect control."…”