Information and consumer perception of the organic attribute: The case of fresh organic fruit and vegetables

Summary

Using a double hurdle model on panel data from 3200 Danish households (monthly observations for 2002-2007) we study the effects of media information about pesticides and information that link health and consumption of organic foods and information on demand for organic fruits and vegetables. We find that ‘negative’ information about pesticides contained in conventional fruits and vegetables influences the probability of a consumer entering the organic market while ‘positive’ information that link health and consumption of organic foods influences the quantities consumed by households that are already active on the organic market. Our dataset includes information about consumers’ media habits allowing us to disentangle the direct effects of media information from the indirect effects of this information as it is disseminated through the population. Our results suggest, that the lagged effects of primary information loadings found in many studies may be caused not by subjects ‘remembering’ but by second round information loadings through dissemination through the population.