Discounting Spotted Apples: Investigating Consumers' Willingness to Accept Cosmetic Damage in an Organic Product

Chengyan Yue, Frode Alfnes and Helen Jensen

Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 2009, vol. 41, issue 1, 29-46

Abstract: The appearance of organic produce is often less than perfect because of limited methods of avoiding plant diseases. We combine hypothetical and real auction mechanisms to investigate how cosmetic damage affects Consumers' willingness to pay for apples. We find that 75% of the participants are willing to pay more for organic than for conventional apples given identical appearance. However, at the first sight of any imperfection in the appearance of the organic apples, this segment is significantly reduced. Furthermore, the cosmetic damage has a larger impact on the willingness to pay for organic apples than for conventional apples.

Date: 2009
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/ ... type/journal_article link to article abstract page (text/html)

Related works:
Journal Article: Discounting Spotted Apples: Investigating Consumers’ Willingness to Accept Cosmetic Damage in an Organic Product (2009)
Working Paper: Discounting Spotted Apples: Investigating Consumers' Willingness to Accept Cosmetic Damage in an Organic Product (2009)
Working Paper: Discounting Spotted Apples: Investigating Consumers' Willingness to Accept Cosmetic Damage in an Organic Product (2006)
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:cup:jagaec:v:41:y:2009:i:01:p:29-46_00

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics from Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press, UPH, Shaftesbury Road, Cambridge CB2 8BS UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kirk Stebbing ().