Eliciting consumer willingness to pay for food quality' attributes: experiments conducted in Tanzania, Norway and the US
| dc.contributor.author | Alphonce, Roselyne | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2023-07-19T11:13:00Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2023-07-19T11:13:00Z | |
| dc.date.issued | 2014-11 | |
| dc.description | Phd Thesis | en_US |
| dc.description.abstract | In measuring consumer preference and willingness to pay for product attributes, many things matter, among them context and choice of methods. This thesis focuses on (1) assessing preference for food quality attributes in different context (all papers) and (2) comparison of results from different methods (paper 2 and 3). The thesis includes data collected in four different experiments in three countries: Tanzania (paper 1 and 2), US (paper 3) and Norway (paper 4). The thesis contributes to the literature on consumer preference studies in Africa, Europe and the US, on experimental valuation methods related to food in Africa, and to the duality literature on preference for food safety standards in restaurants. The four papers should be read independently. The first paper assess the willingness to pay for food safety related attributes in an artefactual field experiment in Tanzania. The paper finds that consumers in Tanzania are concerned with food safety, and the results arc consistent across low and high-income consumers, and across both genders. Men generally have a higher willingness to pay for the food products, however women are willing to pay more for food safety related attributes. Preference for food safety does not however translate into preferences for origins associated with better agricultural practices, meaning consumer probably do not associate origin with safety but rather with other attributes like sustainability or taste. For example, in the study consumers show royalty towards their country and antipathy towards South Africa. In paper 2, we compare four different experimental valuation methods that can be conducted with one respondent at a time in a traditional African food market. The traditional way of conducting food preference studies was through surveys, but in the past two decades there has been a growing literature using lab and field experiments in Europe and the US. In these experiments, products arc evaluated and sold using various non-market valuations techniques. Studies using the different experimental methods have also started to emerge in developing countries. However due to technological, logistical and literacy related challenges, implementing most of these methods can be challenging in lab and field experiments in developing countries. Therefore, we select four non-market valuation methods that arc relatively easy to explain, have a dominant strategy that is not difficult to understand, that are quick to implement, and that can be conducted one-on-one. We then compare the willingness to pay, the efficiency of the methods, and the easiness in explaining and understanding the methods. The paper finds consistent results across all the four methods. Consumers are willing to pay a premium for organic and food-safcty-inspcctcd tomatoes. However, the size of the premium differs between valuation methods where the consumers choose between alternatives, and non-comparativc methods were the consumers indicate their willingness to pay. Due to the easiness in conducting the experiments and efficiency of the measurements, we recommend the use of the price list methods. In paper 3, we investigate whether a consumer-citizen duality exists in the willingness to pay for food safety standards in restaurants. Relying on consumer studies focusing on the buying context to advice on public issues may underestimate the actual support for public regulations. Studies addressing the consumer-citizen duality have mainly been in the environmental economics, and this is one of the first to investigate a possible consumer-citizen duality in consumer preferences for food products. We find that the duality does exist in the willingness to pay for food safety standards in restaurants. Voting citizens exhibit higher willingness to pay for improved food safety standards in restaurants than buying consumers. Paper 4 is a consumer preference study involving both preference for sensory and credence attributes. The paper mainly aims at making recommendations to producers in Africa, trying to position value-added products for maximum revenue from Europe. Despite the significant contribution of studies on organic, fair-trade and country-of-origin, there is still limited understanding on attributes that are most likely to add value to products like dried fruits exported to Europe. To be able to advice African producers about European consumer preferences, we investigate sensory attributes driving consumer preference and assess the willingness to pay for dried fruits with and without credence attributes in Norway. We also use a hierarchical approach to identify factors driving choices for specific product origins. The study finds that naturalness is preferred over uniform taste, and fruit aroma is the most driving factor for the liking of the products, and that extreme hardness and acidity were the most rejected attributes. On the other hand, consumers were cither attracted by a sweet taste or by an acidic/sour taste. Consumers were also willing to pay a premium for dried fruits with an organic and fair-trade label, but favored fair-trade the most. We identify three consumer segments, two with distinct reasons for preferring a country-of-origin and a third one indifferent to the origin of the dried fruits. | en_US |
| dc.description.sponsorship | The Norwegian Program for Development, Research and Education (NUFU) | en_US |
| dc.identifier.isbn | 978-82-5754258-3 | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://www.suaire.sua.ac.tz/handle/123456789/5411 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | en_US |
| dc.publisher | Norwegian University of Life Sciences | en_US |
| dc.subject | Eliciting consumer willingness | en_US |
| dc.subject | Food quality | en_US |
| dc.subject | Norway | en_US |
| dc.subject | Tanzania | en_US |
| dc.subject | US | en_US |
| dc.title | Eliciting consumer willingness to pay for food quality' attributes: experiments conducted in Tanzania, Norway and the US | en_US |
| dc.type | Thesis | en_US |
| dc.url | https://nmbu.brage.unit.no/nmbu-xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2687169/Roselyne_Alphonce_(HH)_Thesis_2015-4.pdf?sequence=1 | en_US |