Visual exposure impacts on toddlers' willingness to taste fruits and vegetables

This study explores the effects of exposure to pictures of fruits and vegetables on young children's willingness to taste the foods. The parents of 20 toddlers aged 21-24 months were asked to read a picture book about four foods with their child every day for two weeks. in a subsequent 'taste test' children displayed a neophobic pattern of behaviour towards foods to which they had not been exposed, but not towards exposed foods. Furthermore, while exposure served to decrease children's willingness to taste familiar vegetables, it increased their willingness to taste unfamiliar fruits. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Local versus organic: a turn in consumer preferences and willingness-to-pay

Demand for local food in the United States has significantly increased over the last decade. In an attempt to understand the drivers of this demand and how they have changed over time, we investigate the literature on organic and local foods over the last few decades. We focus our review on studies that allow comparison of characteristics now associated with both local and organic food. We summarize the major findings of these studies and their implications for understanding drivers of local food demand. Prior to the late 1990s, most studies failed to consider factors now associated with local food, and the few that included these factors found very little support for them. In many cases, the lines between local and organic were blurred. Coincident with the development of federal organic food standards, studies began to find comparatively more support for local food as distinct and separate from organic food. Our review uncovers a distinct turn in the demand for local and organic food. Before the federal organic standards, organic food was linked to small farms, animal welfare, deep sustainability, community support, and many other factors that are not associated with most organic foods today. Based on our review, we argue that demand for local food arose largely in response to corporate cooptation of the organic food market and the arrival of “organic lite.” This important shift in consumer preferences away from organic and toward local food has broad implications for the environment and society. If these patterns of consumer preferences prove to be sustainable, producers, activists, and others should be aware of the implications that these trends have for the food system at large.

Farm animal welfare, consumer willingness to pay, and trust: results of a cross-national survey

Higher animal welfare standards increase costs along the supply chain of certified animal-friendly products (AFP). Since the market outcome of certified AFP depends on consumer confidence toward supply chain operators complying with these standards, the role of trust in consumer willingness-to-pay (WTP) for AFP is paramount. Results from a contingent valuation survey administered in five European Union countries show that WTP estimates were sensitive to robust measures of consumer trust for certified AFP. Deriving the WTP effect of a single food category on total food expenditure is difficult for survey respondents; hence, a budget approach was employed to facilitate this process.

Farmers' willingness to pay for agricultural extension service: evidence from Nigeria

The study was undertaken to investigate how willing would farmers be to pay for agricultural extension service in Nigeria. A multistage random sampling technique was used to select 268 respondents. Results showed that most farmers (95.1 per cent) were willing to pay for improved extension service as long as the service remained relevant to their needs. Farmers were willing to pay N1000 annually as their own share of the service cost. The most important factors that influenced farmers’ willingness to pay were states of origin, items originally paid for, major occupation, minor occupation, number of years in school and sale of farm produce.

Farmers’ willingness to pay for a tuberculosis cattle vaccine

We use contingent valuation (CV) and choice experiment (CE) methods to assess cattle farmers’ attitudes to and willingness to pay (WTP) for a bovine tuberculosis (bTB) cattle vaccine, to help inform vaccine development and policy. A survey questionnaire was administered by means of telephone interviews to a stratified sample of 300 cattle farmers in annually bTB-tested areas in England and Wales. Farmers felt that bTB was a major risk for the cattle industry and that there was a high risk of their cattle getting the disease. The CE estimate produced a mean WTP of £35 per animal per single dose for a vaccine that is 90% effective at reducing the risk of a bTB breakdown and an estimated £55 for such a vaccine backed by 100% insurance of loss if a breakdown should occur. The CV estimate produced a mean WTP of nearly £17 per dose/per animal/per year for a vaccine (including 100% insurance) which, given the average lifespan of cattle, is comparable to the CE estimate. These WTP estimates are substantially higher than the expected cost of a vaccine which suggests that farmers in high risk bTB ‘hotspot’ areas perceive a substantial net benefit from buying the vaccine.

Social consensus, moral intensity and willingness to pay to address a farm animal welfare issue

An experimental contingent valuation (CV) survey of university students was undertaken to explore the impact of social consensus information on people's stated willingness to pay (wtp) to address a farm animal welfare issue. The survey found that additional information presented to respondents on social consensus concerning the moral dimensions of the issue led to a greater perception of social consensus by respondents. This greater perception of social consensus appeared to result in a higher level of moral intensity associated with the issue and a higher stated wtp by respondents for policy to address the issue. However, as for many CV studies of public goods, a question remains as to whether the estimated wtp is a true measure of people's preferences and relative values or merely a measure of attitudes on an arbitrary monetary scale.

Moral intensity and willingness to pay concerning farm animal welfare issues and the implications for agricultural policy

An experimental survey was undertaken to explore the links between the characteristics of a moral issue, the degree of moral intensity/moral imperative associated with the issue (Jones, 1991), and people's stated willingness to pay (wtp) for policy to address the issue. Two farm animal welfare issues were chosen for comparison and the contingent valuation method was used to elicit people's wtp. The findings of the survey suggest that increases in moral characteristics do appear to result in an increase in moral intensity and the degree of moral imperative associated with an issue. Moreover, there was a positive link between moral intensity/moral imperative associated with an issue and people's stated wtp for policy to address the issue. The paper discusses the relevance of the findings of the survey in the context of the debate concerning the relationship between moral and economic values and the use of the contingent valuation method to estimate people's wtp of policy options with moral dimensions.

Towards a theoretical framework for creative participation : how personal characteristics influence employees' willingness to contribute ideas

To retain competitiveness, succeed and flourish, organizations are forced to continuously innovate. This drive for innovation is not solely limited to product/process innovation but more profoundly relates to a continuous process of improving how organizations work internally, requiring a constant stream of ideas and suggestions from motivated employees. In this chapter we investigate some recent developments and propose a conceptual framework for creative participation as a personality driven interface between creativity and innovation. Under the assumption that employees’ intrinsic willingness to contribute novel ideas and solutions requires a set of personal characteristics and necessary skill that might well be unique to each organizational unit, the chapter then explores personal characteristics associated with creativity, innovation and innovative behavior. Various studies on the correlation between creativity and personality types are also reviewed. The chapter provides a discussion of solutions and future development together with recommendations for the future research.

Demand, supply and willingness-to-pay for extension services in an emerging-market setting

Although it may be wholly inappropriate to generalize, the most important resource available to a subsistence household is the total amount of time that its members have available to spend in productive enterprises. In this context, services that minimize the time that it takes to perform productive activities are valuable to the household. Consequently the household is willing to relinquish quantities of other resources in exchange for quantities of the time-saving service. These simple observations motivate a search for the values that subsistence households place on time-saving services. This search is especially important when it is realized that extension services promote productivity, enhance the surplus-generating potential of the household and can, as a consequence, promote immersion into markets that are currently constrained by thinness and instability. In this capacity, extension visitation has the potential to overcome one of the principal impediments to economic development, namely lack of density of market participation. In this article, we consider this issue in the context of a rich data set on milk-market participation by small-holder dairy producers in the Ethiopian highlands.

The role of information on farmers' willingness to use recycled water for irrigation

In this paper are identified several factors which affect a potential user's willingness to use recycled water for agricultural irrigation. This study is based on the results of a survey carried out among farmers in the island of Crete, Greece. It was found that a higher level of income and education are positively correlated with a respondent's willingness to use recycled water. Income and education are also positively correlated with a potential user's sensitivity to information on the advantages of using non-conventional water resources. Overall, extra information on the advantages of recycled water has a statistically significant impact on reported degrees of willingness to use recycled water.

Consumers' attitudes, trust and willingness to pay for food information

Market failure can be corrected using different regulatory approaches ranging from high to low intervention. Recently, classic regulations have been criticized as costly and economically irrational and thus policy makers are giving more consideration to soft regulatory techniques such as information remedies. However, despite the plethora of food information conveyed by different media there appears to be a lack of studies exploring how consumers evaluate this information and how trust towards publishers influence their choices for food information. In order to fill such a gap, this study investigates questions related to topics which are more relevant to consumers, who should disseminate trustful food information, and how communication should be conveyed and segmented. Primary data were collected both through qualitative (in depth interviews and focus groups) and quantitative research (web and mail surveys). Attitudes, willingness to pay for food information and trust towards public and private sources conveying information through a new food magazine were assessed using both multivariate statistical methods and econometric analysis. The study shows that consumer attitudes towards food information topics can be summarized along three cognitive-affective dimensions: the agro-food system, enjoyment and wellness. Information related to health risks caused by nutritional disorders and food safety issues caused by bacteria and chemical substances is the most important for about 90% of respondents. Food information related to regulations and traditions is also considered important for more than two thirds of respondents, while information about food production and processing techniques, life style and food fads are considered less important by the majority of respondents. Trust towards food information disseminated by public bodies is higher than that observed for private bodies. This behavior directly affects willingness to pay (WTP) for food information provided by public and private publishers when markets are shocked by a food safety incident. WTP for consumer association (€ 1.80) and the European Food Safety Authority (€ 1.30) are higher than WTP for the independent and food industry publishers which cluster around zero euro. Furthermore, trust towards the type of publisher also plays a key role in food information market segmentation together with socio-demographic and economic variables such as gender, age, presence of children and income. These findings invite policy makers to reflect on the possibility of using information remedies conveyed using trusted sources of information to specific segments of consumers as an interesting soft alternative to the classic way of regulating modern food markets.

Investigating the value dairy farmers place on a reduction of lameness in their herds using a willingness to pay approach

A survey was conducted to elicit dairy farmers’ willingness to pay (WTP) to reduce the prevalence of lameness in their herds. A choice experiment questionnaire was administered using face-to-face interviews of 163 farmers in England and Wales. Whole herd lameness assessments by trained researchers recorded a mean lameness prevalence of nearly 24% which was substantially higher than that estimated by farmers. Farmers’ responses to a series of attitudinal questions showed that they strongly agreed that cows can suffer a lot of pain from lameness and believed that they could reduce lameness in their herds. Farmers’ mean WTP to avoid lameness amounted to UK£411 per lame cow but with considerable variation across the sample. Median WTP of UK£249 per lame cow was considered a better measure of central tendency for the sample. In addition, the survey found that farmers had a substantial WTP to avoid the inconvenience associated with lameness control (a median value of UK£97 per lame cow) but that they were generally prepared to incur greater inconvenience if it reduced lameness. The study findings suggest that farmers need a better understanding of the scale and costs of lameness in their herds and the benefits of control. To encourage action, farmers need to be convinced that lameness control measures perceived as inconvenient will be cost effective.