Measuring Consumer Preferences and Willingness to Pay for Coffee Certification Labels in Taiwan

Chun Liu (), Chu-Wei Chen and Han-Shen Chen
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Chu-Wei Chen: Department of Applied Economics, National Chung Hsing University, No. 250, Kuo Kuang Rd., Taichung 40227, Taiwan
Han-Shen Chen: Department of Health Diet and Industry Management, Chung Shan Medical University, No. 110, Sec. 1, Jianguo N. Rd., Taichung City 40201, Taiwan

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 5, 1-13

Abstract: Sustainability certification labels have become an important tool for aiding consumers in evaluating food safety, health concerns, and environmental friendliness. Few studies have explored the attributes of consumers’ environmental consciousnesses from the perspective of environmental concerns; hence, we focus on that lack. Our study contributes to the need to better understand consumer attention to sustainability information when making coffee certification attribute choices. We aimed to explore the importance that consumers attach to coffee certification attributes paid to these attributes while choosing and to willingness to pay (WTP). There were 650 questionnaires completed by those who had purchased coffee beans habitually in Taiwan; after factoring out the invalid questionnaires (i.e., those with omitted answers, incomplete answers, or those in which answers to all the questions received the same scale points were all deemed as invalid and removed), 568 valid ones were collected with a recovery rate of 87.4%. The results indicate that the respondents’ WTP attributes ranked from highest to lowest are traceability, organic, graded, environmentally friendly, and fair-trade certifications. This study provides insights into how consumers’ preferences relate to selection of coffee certification attributes.

Keywords: environmental friendliness; choice experiment; sustainability labels (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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