Consumer Behavior, Public Policy, and Country-of-Origin Labeling

Abstract

Recent work by agricultural economists has failed to adequately identify why consumers desire country-of-origin labeling, a key piece of information needed to determine whether a market-failure exists. This paper brings to the attention of agricultural economists a sizable body of literature on country-of-origin effects from the marketing and business disciplines. Based on this literature, we draw a distinction between several consumer motivations for origin labels and we identify which of these is cause for public policy. We propose several research questions that require answers if the consequences of country-of-origin labeling policy are to be fully understood.

Consumers' perceptions of stakeholder credibility: who has it and who perceives it

“…Among the different stakeholders, the literature focused heavily on the impact of public actors through certification, labeling and generic promotion programs. For example, it focused on the impact of Protected Denominations of Origin in the EU (Bonnet and Simioni, 2001;Loureiro and McCluskey, 2000;Verbeke and Ward, 2006) and Country-of-Origin Labeling in the US (Loureiro and Umberger, 2005;Lusk et al, 2006;Verbeke and Ward, 2006) on consumers worldwide. Other studies focused on the impact of generic promotion programs (Alston et al, 2001;Brester and Schroeder, 1995;Kinnucan et al, 1997;Ward and Lambert, 1993) funded and implemented by public agencies or by food producers' associations.…”

A Cost-Benefit Framework for the Assessment of Non-Tariff Measures in Agro-Food Trade

“…Lagerkvist, Carlsson and Viske (2006), via a choice experiment, and Napolitano et al (2008), via a lab experiment, measure WTP for animal welfare (including the use of hormones). Some experiments study the effect of the COOL (the country-of-origin-labels mentioning the geographic origin of products) program in the US (see Lusk et al, 2006a). Some studies elicit the WTP for biodiversity (Stoneham et al 2003), even if the main technique used for this topic is contingent valuation.…”

Cadre d'analyse coût-avantages pour l'évaluation des mesures non tarifaires s'appliquant aux échanges agroalimentaires

“…Précisons que ce type de résultat expérimental justifierait de simplifier la situation en séparant les consommateurs en seulement deux groupes : les consommateurs ayant une préférence, et les indifférents. Lusk et al (2006a)). Certaines études font ressortir la propension à payer pour la biodiversité (Stoneham et al 2003), même si la principale technique employée dans ce domaine est l'évaluation contingente.…”