The effects of values and information on the willingness to pay for sustainability credence attributes for coffee

Abstract

This research estimates consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for coffee labeled for sustainability credence attributes using non-hypothetical experimental auctions. We examined consumers' WTP for Fair Trade, USDA Organic, Rainforest Alliance, Direct Trade, and a combination of Fair Trade and USDA Organic labels on coffee. Additionally, we investigated the underlying motivations of WTP for sustainable coffee. Specifically, we focused on altruistic, egoistic, and biospheric value orientation, and the warm glow effect. Our results indicate that consumers are willing to pay a premium of $2.57 for a 12oz coffee bag labeled for both, Fair

Willingness to pay for credence attributes associated with agri‐food products—Evidence from Canada

“…This section first presents general results on unconditional interval‐censored estimates of the means and standard deviations of Canadians' WTP for individual and a set of credence attributes. Because there are evidences that WTP for food attributes is influenced by demographic characteristics (Briggeman and Lusk, 2011; Katt and Meixner, 2020; Li & Kallas, 2021; McFadden & Huffman, 2017), product type, and attributes studied (Fuller et al., 2022), we next highlight some heterogeneity effects by reporting the mean estimates of consumers' WTP for individual and a set of credence attributes by province, gender, age, and income of the respondents. In doing so, we estimate the mean and covariance of WTP for individual and a set of credence attributes for each subcategory of respondents and then simulate 10,000 draws following a normal distribution characterized by the estimated mean and covariance.…”

“…In particular, they are concerned about not only how the benefits generated by their purchases are distributed among the actors involved in agri‐food supply chains, but also who benefits from their purchases (Briggeman & Lusk, 2011; Busch & Spiller, 2016; Leiper & Clarke‐Sather, 2017; Samoggia et al., 2021). Several empirical evidences also support that consumers' purchase decisions or willingness to pay (WTP) for an agri‐food product are influenced by attributes such as origin (Darby et al., 2008; Brown, 2003; Bruhn et al., 1992; Loureiro et al., 2002; Printezis & Grebitus, 2018), safety and wholesomeness of food (Roosen et al., 1998), as well as environmental and social standards in their production (Fuller et al., 2022) or a combination of two or more of these attributes. However, unlike price or appearance, which are available at the time of the consumer purchase decision, attributes such as environmental impact of production, origin, fairness, and food safety/health are often not available with certainty prior to or even after the purchase decision, resulting in an imperfect or asymmetric information problem and thus, for example, suboptimal supply of products with these desirable attributes.…”

Consumers' preferences and willingness to pay for coffee sustainability labels

“…bag of coffee. Before participants made their choices, we provided them with information about the appearance and meaning of the sustainability labels following Fuller et al (2022):…”

“…They found that consumers are willing to pay more for social efforts involved with direct trade practices and their cultural worldviews affect their WTP. Most recently, Fuller et al (2022) used a laboratory auction experiment to analyze preferences, motivations, and WTP for the abovementioned labels. The authors focused on the effect of information, value orientations, and the warm glow effect on WTP for sustainable coffee.…”

Sales Scale, Non-Pastoral Employment and Herders’ Technology Adoption: Evidence from Pastoral China

“…Relevant studies have shown that environmental awareness and altruism are important drivers in the decision-making process of humans for ethical behavior. Both also have significant impacts on farmers' pro-environmental technology adoption [56,[58][59][60].…”