The Role of Health Information in Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Canned Crushed Tomatoes Enriched with Lycopene

Abstract

The paper investigated whether information about the health benefit produced by lycopene could influence consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for canned crushed tomatoes enriched with lycopene. An additional aim was to determine whether the main socio-demographic variables, such as sex, age, income and selected attitudinal factors, affect WTP. To this end, a non-hypothetical experimental auction was carried on with five repeated rounds. Results show a relevant impact of information on WTP in the case of lycopene-enriched products, whereas no difference in bids emerges for the conventional product, either on average or at the quantiles. Previous knowledge seems to have a modest influence upon WTP, but it shows a significant interaction with the information shock provided during the experiment, so that the effect of the latter is more pronounced when previous knowledge is low. In addition, age, sex, food technology neophobia, trust in science and implicit attitudes towards food technology significantly affect participants’ WTP.

Consumer Evaluation of the Role of Functional Food Products in Disease Prevention and the Characteristics of Target Groups

“…Thus, we can emphasize that in the case of these diseases, it is important that companies address their prevention-related communication primarily at women. This result is in line with previous literature [30][31][32][33][34], which state that women are more open to functional food; at the same time, our results provide a more nuanced picture in that they identify the diseases for the prevention of which functional food development should be targeted to women.…”

“…For this last problem, buying and consuming functional foods can be an important prevention method also for the 50+ age group, whereas for memory and concentration problems, the 25-35 age group may consider this method. This result of ours clarifies the statements of previous literature [17,31,32,34,35], according to which it is the middle-aged and the elderly rather than the young who would consume such products.…”

“…Numerous literature sources [17,[30][31][32][33][34][35] emphasize the important role of gender, age, and completed education as key demographic factors influencing the consumption of functional foods. However, by looking at such products from a different angle, apart from age and completed education, the results of our research also confirm the effects of other influencing factors, such as place of living, BMI rating, and the perception of income.…”

Nutritional Status and the Influence of the Vegan Diet on the Gut Microbiota and Human Health

“…Such compounds are polyphenols found in grapes, berries, and nuts, indole-3-carbinol in cruciferous vegetables such as sprouts, cabbage, and cauliflower, isoflavones found in legumes, including clover, soy, and lupine, and lycopene in tomatoes. In general, these substances, which are referred as food ingredients, have no additive nutritional value, but they can affect various metabolic pathways of the body, providing multiple health benefits [36][37][38][39]. However, if a vegan diet is not appropriately planned, reduction of caloric intake and nutritional deficiency of fatty acids, proteins, vitamins, and minerals may appear [1].…”

The Effect of Greenhouse Pollination Methods on Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Tomatoes in Japan

“…Some scholarship has already been carried out on consumer evaluations of agricultural products with such altruistic attributes in addition rice (Ujiie, 2013). Notably, previous studies dealt with consumer evaluations of tomato labeling regarding food safety and environmental considerations (Jürkenbeck, Spiller, and Meyerding, 2020;Maples et al, 2018;Meyerding, Trajer, and Lehberger, 2019;Yin et al, 2017) as well as consumer evaluations of tomatoes as functional foods (La Barbera, Amato, and Sannino, 2016;Teratanavat and Hooker, 2006;Verneau, La Barbera, and Furno, 2019). However, only a handful of studies have been conducted on consumer evaluations of pollination methods for agricultural products.…”