Estimating consumer preferences and willingness to pay for the underutilised indigenous chicken products

Indigenous chicken serves many functions, which include the provision of meat and eggs for home consumption and income from sales. The purpose of this study was to estimate the consumers’ responsiveness to an increase in prices of the indigenous chicken products and how much they are willing to pay for them in the market. The survey was conducted in the selected three regions of Kenya. A total of 930 respondents were interviewed both in the urban and rural areas. Contingent valuation experiment was used in empirical data collection. The two-step Heckman selection model was utilised to analyse consumers decisions and the amount they were willing to pay. The study results revealed that consumers are willing to pay 23.26% per kg more for indigenous chicken meat and 41.53% for eggs. Socioeconomic factors like age, income, education and family size significantly determines consumers’ willingness to pay. Other important factors include the indigenous chicken meat substitutes’ prices, attributes like taste/flavour and the product’s form on purchase. The yolk colour and size of eggs determined the consumers’ willingness to pay. Preferences for indigenous chicken products were found to be high. This information will assist in understanding both the urban and rural consumer’s behaviour. Therefore, useful for the indigenous chicken producers, breeders, marketers and policy makers in developing efficient production and marketing strategies. This would also provide a means of improving food security and livelihoods of the rural poor indigenous chicken farmers.     

The cross-price effect on willingness-to-pay estimates in open-ended contingent valuation

Previous literature has shown that potential buyers use a reference price or product to form their opinion about the value of a new product. Therefore, the pricing decision is an interactive process. We investigate the two generalizations of the cross-price effect (the neighborhood price effect and the asymmetric price effect) on consumer willingness-to-pay (WTP) for multiple similar products in an open-ended contingent valuation context. Results show that the cross-price effect on WTP is prominent, with the neighborhood price effect holding in contingent valuation. No conclusions are reached about the asymmetric price effect.     

WTO negotiations on agriculture and the distributional impacts for US rice farm households

The policies of wealthy countries have proven the most difficult to reform in the WTO Doha Round negotiations. Considerable emphasis has been placed on developing country impacts, but a gap in the literature remains on the stakes for rich country farmers despite the large role these countries play in global agricultural protection. The research here considers the particular case of US rice households and their sensitivity to Japanese market access reform. Using an applied general equilibrium model with multiple farm households we highlight the distributional impacts among these producers. We argue that concessions to Japan on market access make domestic reforms in rice a difficult political sale in the US since the wealthiest producers bear the largest losses. Improving our understanding of the distributional impacts and political realities of the richest countries is critical to informing the negotiating process because the gains to the world’s poor can only be realized with creative policy redress in these rich nations.     

Willingness to pay and pricing for broadband across the rural/urban divide in Canada

Efforts to close the rural/urban digital divide in Canada have reached new heights in the wake of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and “stay-at-home” policies. Yet the extent to which the rural/urban digital divide extends to pricing and demand for broadband services is not well understood. Using a dataset of more than 4700 residential survey responses from southern Ontario, Canada, we assess the disparity in pricing and willingness to pay for broadband across rural and urban households. Our results suggest that rural users face higher installation and monthly fees while receiving a significantly inferior quality of service than their urban counterparts. Demand among rural users for improved broadband access is also higher than for urban users. These results may strengthen the business case for expanding broadband services into rural areas and/or supporting justification for public subsidization. Our analysis also suggests higher economic net benefits from prioritizing majority access at current federal service objectives rather than investing in a small number of users to receive higher quality broadband.