An investigation into Italian consumers’ awareness, perception, knowledge of European Union quality certifications, and consumption of agri-food products carrying those certifications

Niculina Iudita Sampalean, Daniele Rama and Giulio Visent

Bio-based and Applied Economics Journal, 2021, vol. 10, issue 01

Abstract: The present study investigated Italian consumers’ awareness, perception, knowledge of European Union (EU) quality certifications: Protected Designation of Origin (PDO), Protected Geographical Indication (PGI), Traditional Specialty Guar-anteed (TSG), and organic as well as the consumption of agri-food products carrying those certifications. A total of 212 consumers responsible for food purchases took part in a web-based survey between June and December 2019, inclusive. Descriptive sta-tistics were calculated in relation to the data collected, followed by a factor analysis to reduce data dimensionality, and a cluster analysis on the latent variables generated, to identify similarities and differences among respondents. Awareness, perception, knowl-edge and consumption of agri-food products carrying EU quality labels has increased among consumers in recent years. The results related to the consumer’s knowledge of quality-certified products showed that more than half of respondents were able to spontaneously quote examples of PDO (76%), PGI (56%) and organic food products (73%) while only 33% of participants could name at least one TSG product. The gener-al awareness of the guarantees offered by PDO and PGI certifications was also assessed in relation to production processes, the natural and human factors of a particular envi-ronment and the reputation and quality of a particular region. Cluster analysis showed that consumers with the highest education were most likely to value EU quality certi-fications and support their local economies. The information obtained have practical implications for marketing and communication of European certified food products at national and international level.

Keywords: Consumer/Household; Economics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/312981/files/Sampalean_et_al_BAE_1_2021.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aieabj:312981

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.312981

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Bio-based and Applied Economics Journal from Italian Association of Agricultural and Applied Economics (AIEAA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().