Information, Branding, Certification, and Consumer Willingness to Pay for High-Iron Pearl Millet: Experimental Evidence from Maharashtra, India

Abhijit Banerji, Ekin Birol, Bhushana Karandikar and Jeevant Rampal

No 211346, 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy from International Association of Agricultural Economists

Abstract: In this paper we use sensory evaluation methods and Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism to estimate consumer demand for biofortified high-iron pearl millet (HIPM) in Maharashtra, India. Unlike biofortification with provitamin A, biofortification with iron and zinc, does not change the color of the biofortified crop. Therefore, we test the impact of both nutrition information, and branding and certification, as well as the nature of the brand and of the certifying authority (state level versus international), on consumer demand for HIPM. We find that even in the absence of nutrition information, consumers assign a small but significant premium to the HIPM variety relative to the local variety. This is consistent with consumers’ more favorable rating of the sensory characteristics of the high-iron variety. Nutrition information on the health benefits of HIPM increases this premium substantially, and regression analysis reveals that consumers prefer international branding and certification authority to their state-level counterparts.

Keywords: Crop; Production/Industries (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 31
Date: 2015
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mkt
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:iaae15:211346

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.211346

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