A comparative analysis of the purchase motivations of Fair Trade products: the impact of social capital

Biagia De Devitiis, Massimiliano D'Alessio and Ornella Maietta

No 44148, 2008 International Congress, August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium from European Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: Objective of this paper is to analyse the motivations in the purchase of Fair Trade (FT) food products sold in the World Shops (WS) in order to characterize WS consumer profiles according to the ethical content of their motivations. A questionnaire has been distributed, at this end, to a sample of consumers in Emilia Romagna, Puglia and in Campania. A principal component analysis has been performed in order to identify the main motivations in the purchase. On the basis of these results, consumers have been classified, by applying a cluster analysis, in homogenous segments. The cluster analysis reveals that 76% of consumers in Emilia Romagna buy FT products for an ethical motivation, 56% of consumers in Puglia and 43% of consumers in Campania buy these products for an ethical motivation. These percentages reflect the rank of social capital, intended as the civicness component a la Putnam, of the regions analysed. These results show a clear relationship between the civicness component of social capital a la Putnam and the diffusion of consumer social responsibility, even in the niche market of WSs consumers.

Keywords: Demand and Price Analysis; International Relations/Trade (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 14
Date: 2008
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/44148/files/216.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:eaae08:44148

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.44148

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in 2008 International Congress, August 26-29, 2008, Ghent, Belgium from European Association of Agricultural Economists Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().