The Value of Environmental and Health Claims on New Legume Products: A Non-Hypothetical Online Auction

Abstract

Legumes are valued in agricultural systems, as they can contribute to a more sustainable land use. However, their economic value is low. Despite health and environmental benefits, marketers struggle to communicate the worth of legumes to consumers. We evaluate the worth of health and, in particular, environmental claims that would spread consumers' awareness of ecological advantages. Utilizing a large consumer sample, we execute binding online auctions. Comparing claim-treated and untreated subjects (between design), we model the price premium that potential customers are willing to pay (WTP) for having pasta in a legume instead of a wheat version. We find that claims may increase the WTP, however, a mix of environmental and health claims is superior to individual claims. Effect sizes suggest that the mix of claims increases the WTP by roughly 35% (20 cents). The link of WTP and food attitudes, such as concern for health in eating habits or social reservations towards legumes, varies depending on whether the green-pea or chickpea pasta was evaluated. A critical perception of legumes' association with flatulence reduces the WTP. Developing the online auction may enable researchers to increase the external validity of consumer samples. We discuss implications for researchers and marketers.

Sustainable Diet Dimensions. Comparing Consumer Preference for Nutrition, Environmental and Social Responsibility Food Labelling: A Systematic Review

“…Combination labelling received consistently high WTP. One study calculated WTP for a mix of nutrition-health and environmental attribute information, with this resulting in a WTP premium of 35%, the highest marginal effect within the study [49]. A similar result can be seen in Bond [63], where combining an organic claim with one for vitamin C led to an 18% price premium compared to 3.7% and 7.4% for the respective label claims in isolation.…”

“…Nine studies showed a preference for nutrition or nutrition-health label information; one study finding no significant difference between descriptive labels but with a trend toward the nutrition-health label. Three studies found a mix of both health and environmental and/or social responsibility attributes were most popular [47,49,50]. In those studies where environmental and social responsibility attributes were preferred, organic was the preferred choice in eight studies [28,43,46,[51][52][53][54], with animal welfare claims coming a close second (five studies) [44,[55][56][57][58].…”

“…Five studies examined the effect of combining nutrition and/or environmental attribute information (two choice experiments, two experimental auctions and one qualitative study) [40,47,49,50,63]. Four of the five showed a significant increase in both consumer preference and WTP as a result.…”

“…Gender was an important driver of preference, with women more likely to be concerned with animal welfare issues and nutrition, specifically food fat content [28,44,50,62]. Lifestyle values consistently aligned with attribute preference; nine studies found a relationship between self-reported levels of health or environmental consciousness or knowledge and subsequent attribute preference [45,47,49,53,57,59,61,64].…”

Consumers’ Trade-Off between Nutrition and Health Claims under Regulation 1924/2006: Insights from a Choice Experiment Analysis

“…If both the claims "reduced-fat" and "low salt" were presented on the same package consumers were willing to pay a premium price. Lemken (2017) [28] also observed differences in consumers' WTP for diverse types of nutrition claims conveyed on legumes pasta. He found that legume pasta advertised with nutrition claims showed a higher WTP than conventional pasta and in particular the fibre claim appeared to be superior to that of the protein claim.…”