24pgs, Increasingly, the health claims made by food products focus on the marketing of specific molecular enrichments. Research exploring consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for health claims assumes that individuals hold perfect information on the benefits of the enrichment, and that their valuations depend solely on whether or not they need to improve their health. While health interventions are aimed at individuals at higher health risk, consumers may be unaware of the health risks that they face, limiting the effectiveness of a generic targeting strategy. Using an orthogonal experimental design, we explore the impact of two factors on the WTP for vitamin D enrichment in eggs: whether the information is person-specific or generic; and the presence of a health claim explaining the vitamin D enrichment. Results indicate that it is the provision of information, not the health claim, that influences WTP. Both generic and personalised information lead to similar increases in the WTP for vitamin D enrichment. While we only observe a direct effect of generic information on the WTP for vitamin D enrichment, personal information may also operate by increasing the perceived risk of vitamin D deficiency. Our results support the use of personalised health information during the choice task as a means of increasing the sales of healthy products.
Palloni, G. (author), Aker, J. (author), Gilligan, D. (author), Hidrobo, M. (author), and Ledlie, N. (author)
Format:
Paper
Publication Date:
2018
Published:
Ghana
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 165 Document Number: D11668
Notes:
26 pages., Paper presented at the 2018 conference of the International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE), July 28-August 2, 2018, in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada., Researchers assessed farmers' willingness to pay for a newly introduced digital nutrition-sensitive agricultural information service in Ghana, called Vodafone Farmers' Club (VFC). Findings suggested that farmers' willingness to pay for VFC service was high at low prices, then decreased rapidly as the price increased. Women had statistically lower willingness to pay than men, whether for agricultural information only or information involving both agriculture and nutrition.
15pgs, Research has suggested to not solely include cognitive processes but also affective processes in economic choice modeling. Studying Medjool dates, we conducted a laboratory experiment combining choice experiments and eye-tracking to account for cognitive processes. In addition, participants indicated their level of worry related to production practices to account for affective processes. Our results show that consumers worry more about pesticide residues than genetic modification in foods. They also pay more attention to labels related to these production practices compared to other labels; and the production practice labels received the highest willingness to pay (WTP). Results from linear regressions show that both cognitive and affective processes are associated with WTP. Especially in the full model for WTP for pesticide-free labeling an increase of attention by 1 s increases WTP on average by $0.10 and an increase of the level of worry from one category to the next increases WTP on average by $0.17. Overall, results show that including both cognitive and affective processes as explanatory variables is important when determining factors associated with WTP.
8 pages., Online via UI electronic subscription., Researchers measured farmer demand for a new agricultural technology , a triple-layered hermetic storage bag which reduces storage loss from insect pests and neutralizes aflatoxin contamination in grain. Findings revealed a highly elastic demand that that the wholesaler could increase profit by lowering the price. Farmers who had prior awareness of the bag were willing to pay 20% more on average than those previously unaware of it. Farmers' valuation of the bags was not significantly different based on the medium (text, audio, or video) through which they received the information.
19 pages., Online via UI e-subscription., Authors tested food label and information treatment effects on subjects' willingness-to-pay for organic, "natural," and conventional foods. They found large information effects, including asymmetric cross-market effects for natural and organic foods. Organic premiums increased in response to subjects' seeing the "natural" foods industry's perspective on its products.
