In the last few decades, the interest of consumers towards sustainable agri-food products has been growing. This trend reflects changes in the consumption patterns, which have been deeply influenced by the increased sensitivity concerning social and environmental issues. In this sense, several studies, with different methodological approaches, have investigated consumers’ willingness to pay and its determinants for products with different sustainability labels. To systematise the obtained results, this paper offers a review of the studies that used experimental economics in studying consumer preferences for sustainable food and agricultural products. The 41 studies included in the review were selected on the basis of the pre-identified criterion according to the systematic review approach. Albeit discordant, the results show that a large share of consumers is willing to pay a premium price for products with eco-friendly and organic certifications. Animal welfare, ‘local’ production, or social certification appear to have a lower influence on consumer choice of purchasing. Additional information is able to modify consumer expectations and consequentially their willingness to pay, depending on the individual’s responsibility and awareness.
The purpose of our research is to develop an integrated sustainability score (ISS) choosing the farm level as system's boundaries and developing a methodology, based on a geometric mean algorithm, which is negatively affected by the internal imbalance of the agroecosystem. The first step is to identify and calculate the indicators of systems and sub-systems to assess the agro-ecological and socioeconomic dimensions of sustainability. The second step is the selection, weighting and integration of indicators that permit the calculation of the ISS ranging from 0 to 1. The farm sustainability score is categorized into three levels: weak, intermediate and strong. This methodology has been verified on a stockless organic farming system case study of 12 farms in Italy. Results show that most of the farms reached intermediate levels of sustainability but there are significant differences on ISS scores within the study group. Agro-ecological and socioeconomic dimension play a different role in highlighting the coexistence of different models of sustainability. A further development of the present methodology should include an in-depth analysis of the social dimension of sustainability and integrate an assessment procedure to formulate improved management practices that will help farmers to find win-win solutions that decrease the contrast between environmental and economic sustainability.
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