Consumer Willingness to Pay for Dairy Products With the 100% Canadian Milk Label: A Discrete Choice Experiment

ABSTRACT

A component of the supply management policy governing the Canadian dairy sector is a requirement that all milk and cream sold in Canada be sourced from Canadian producers. Cheese, yogurt, and ice cream, however, can be made using imported milk components. Recently, the Dairy Farmers of Canada launched a 100% Canadian Milk label for products that contain only milk and milk ingredients produced in Canada. Featuring a discrete choice experiment, a Canada-wide survey of dairy consumers is used to elicit their willingness-to-pay for milk and ice cream carrying the 100% Canadian Milk label. The results show that Canadian consumers are willing to pay more for milk and ice cream products that carry the label. Consumer knowledge of the dairy sector affects their willingness to pay for this labeling information. Implications for the use of the Canadian origin label and suggestions for further research are discussed.     

Linking Consumers’ Food Choice Motives to their Preferences for Insect‐based Food Products: An Application of Integrated Choice and Latent Variable Model in an African Context

Consumers’ attitudes, perceptions, personalities and motives play important roles in shaping their food choices. These factors are not fully observed by analysts, so they should be treated as latent variables. A number of economic studies treat such variables as direct measures of consumers’ food choice behaviour, even though this might introduce measurement error and endogeneity bias. We investigate the latent link between consumers’ preferences and food choice motives (FCMs) in an African context. We use an integrated choice and latent variable (ICLV) model specification for data analysis to recognise the latent nature of the FCMs and address the measurement and bias problems. The data originate from an incentivised discrete choice experiment conducted in Kenya to elicit consumers’ preferences for insect‐based foods. Our findings show that consumers’ preferences and choices are influenced by their latent motivational orientation. The results illustrate the benefit of the ICLV approach in accounting for consumers’ latent preference constructs in food choice and valuation research.     

Using choice experiments to value catchment and estuary health in Tasmania with individual preference heterogeneity*

Choice experiments (CE) have become widespread as an approach to environmental valuation in both Australia and overseas. However, there are few valuation studies that have addressed natural resource management (NRM) changes in Tasmania. Furthermore, few studies have focussed on the estimation of estuary values. The CE study described in this paper aims to analyse community preferences for NRM options in the George catchment, Tasmania. Catchment health attributes were: the length of native riverside vegetation; the number of rare native animal and plant species in the George catchment; and area of healthy seagrass beds in the Georges Bay, which was used as a measure of estuary condition. Mixed logit models with interactions between socio‐economic variables and the choice attributes were estimated to account for systematic and random taste heterogeneity across respondents. Results reveal considerable variation in preferences towards the attributes and show that value estimates are significantly impacted by the way in which we account for preference heterogeneity. Preference heterogeneity thus needs to be considered when estimating community willingness‐to‐pay for environmental changes. This study further shows little responsiveness to the presented changes in estuary seagrass area.