RATION in the 100th Annual Conference of the Agricultural Economics Society in Oxford, UK
During the session “Consumer Preferences I”, Joao Godinho from Wageninge University gave a talk on “Consumer impact assessment of proposed changes” presenting results of RATION. The main goal was to measure the diversity of consumers’ Willingness-to-Pay (WTP) across the EU, for vegetables and fruits with food labels indicating the exclusive use of low-risk pesticides(LRPs) /biopesticides, in their crop production. Consumers’ WTP was measured through a web-survey targeting roughly 3,600 consumers across six EU countries, namely Austria, Denmark, Estonia, France, Greece, and the Netherlands. Through this survey, we investigated four main composites, and how these can serve as predictors for WTP. Namely:
- Consumers’ general awareness and prior knowledge of LRPs;
- Their general attitudes towards food consumption;
- Their regulatory perceptions and preferences towards LRPs;
- Their perception towards the establishment of a novel product label specific to produce grown exclusively with LRPs.
