5.2. Limitations
The field auction approach adopted here has some disadvantages, including lack of repeated rounds, potential presence of reference-dependence preferences, and potential signals of inferior quality of the endowment. However, use of a single-round auction was intended to mimic purchasing behavior more closely, which was considered relevant given the location and the aim of the study.
The experiment did not allow for longer-term evaluation. Full evaluation of the effects of interventions, such as an improved level of food safety in an integrated supply chain system, would require an extended study period in order to capture adjustments among farmers, market actors, and consumers. In addition, on the benefit side, consumers could be expected to adjust to the type of produce marketed. This could lead to prices having to be adjusted downwards.
6. Conclusions
To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine how consumer preferences for enhanced levels of food safety and hygiene, as revealed through an economic experiment, can be predicted by a behavioral model based in reasoned action theory, but augmented by individual internal factors which might disrupt the intention-behavior relationship. There is growing interest among food safety and quality researchers in understanding the monetary valuation of risk reduction and food safety improvements. This experiment provided evidence-based results on the drivers for small-scale, local, targeted interventions for improvement of food safety for fresh produce in a context where such improvements would be of high significance for improving public health. Rather radical adjustments were made to how the fresh product (kale) was managed through the supply chain and finally presented at a traditional peri-urban market. This paper makes a novel contribution to the literature by analyzing different structural relationships between the set of independent variables and the dependent variable using a censored quantile regression which accounts for heterogeneity across the sample in both variance (i.e. heteroscedasticity) and the structural model. The results showed that market demand existed among the consumers studied, but there were considerable differences in the impact of salience, social evaluation, and trust on WTP. This means that there were determinants of actual purchasing behavior which operated differently along the price range. The results offer an emerging opportunity to target market interventions and indicate that it is critical to learn how consumers form their actual WTP. They also emphasize the importance of incorporating a non-linear setting when analyzing the influence of salience, social evaluation, and trust on auction bids.
The results should be viewed as part of the IMBP, since the IMBP literature suggests that environmental constraints and personal skills are predictors of actual behavior. Future research should continue to address how predictors of environmental constraints and personal skills can be extended to reveal drivers of revealed demand (or, in non-economic contexts, actual behavior). Future studies should test our results in light of the complete IMBP.
5.2. LimitationsThe field auction approach adopted here has some disadvantages, including lack of repeated rounds, potential presence of reference-dependence preferences, and potential signals of inferior quality of the endowment. However, use of a single-round auction was intended to mimic purchasing behavior more closely, which was considered relevant given the location and the aim of the study.The experiment did not allow for longer-term evaluation. Full evaluation of the effects of interventions, such as an improved level of food safety in an integrated supply chain system, would require an extended study period in order to capture adjustments among farmers, market actors, and consumers. In addition, on the benefit side, consumers could be expected to adjust to the type of produce marketed. This could lead to prices having to be adjusted downwards.6. ConclusionsTo the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to examine how consumer preferences for enhanced levels of food safety and hygiene, as revealed through an economic experiment, can be predicted by a behavioral model based in reasoned action theory, but augmented by individual internal factors which might disrupt the intention-behavior relationship. There is growing interest among food safety and quality researchers in understanding the monetary valuation of risk reduction and food safety improvements. This experiment provided evidence-based results on the drivers for small-scale, local, targeted interventions for improvement of food safety for fresh produce in a context where such improvements would be of high significance for improving public health. Rather radical adjustments were made to how the fresh product (kale) was managed through the supply chain and finally presented at a traditional peri-urban market. This paper makes a novel contribution to the literature by analyzing different structural relationships between the set of independent variables and the dependent variable using a censored quantile regression which accounts for heterogeneity across the sample in both variance (i.e. heteroscedasticity) and the structural model. The results showed that market demand existed among the consumers studied, but there were considerable differences in the impact of salience, social evaluation, and trust on WTP. This means that there were determinants of actual purchasing behavior which operated differently along the price range. The results offer an emerging opportunity to target market interventions and indicate that it is critical to learn how consumers form their actual WTP. They also emphasize the importance of incorporating a non-linear setting when analyzing the influence of salience, social evaluation, and trust on auction bids.The results should be viewed as part of the IMBP, since the IMBP literature suggests that environmental constraints and personal skills are predictors of actual behavior. Future research should continue to address how predictors of environmental constraints and personal skills can be extended to reveal drivers of revealed demand (or, in non-economic contexts, actual behavior). Future studies should test our results in light of the complete IMBP.
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