Estimation of consumers’ willingness to pay to reduce pesticides, based on experimental markets

Summary translation

Much work has been done in economics to appraise consumers’ environmental characteristics valuations. Economists have employed several methods to determine how consumers value the environmental characteristics of foodstuffs. In this study, we used an experimental market to determine consumer’s willingness to pay (WTP) for produce grown with different pesticide levels. We worked on apples grown with different production types: conventional apples, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) apples and organic apples. Experimental markets are carried out in Portugal, France (for the period May 2008 to October 2009) and then in Greece and Holland (2010). The pesticides use complies with legal norm in the conventional apple. The pesticide quantity use is lower in the IPM apples and there is no synthesis pesticide in the organic apple. In this experimental market, we evaluated the consumers’ WTP under different information conditions. There is a consumer willingness to pay higher for produces grown with less pesticides and the preferred certification is the zero synthesis pesticides (i.e. organic produce). We show the following results. i) In Portugal, the premium against a regular product is 53.6 % for Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and 96.4% for organic products. ii) In France the premium is 43.6% for IPM and 72.5% for organic products. However, in both two countries, premium increase is lower for a processed product.