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From some work on experimental economy carried out in several European countries (Portugal, France, Greece and the Netherlands), we assess the willingness to pay (WTP) of consumers for various levels of environmental certification of food products (particularly organic farming and Integrated Pest Management production strategies). With the help of this assessment we are able to define a multi-criterion procedure for the public authorities with the aim of securing the participation of consumers in a collective effort to reduce pesticides in agriculture. We show how European consumers may have relatively uniform expectations vis-à-vis the reduction of pesticides in the fruit and vegetable sector. When this reduction is publicly certified, consumers’ willingness to pay increases as a function of the level of reduction. Organic farming is clearly approved in all the countries and very often enables a doubling of the consumers’ WTP. On the other hand, partial reduction via public or private Integrated Pest Management is, other things being equal, only accorded low value. As part of a multi-criterion approach to public policies, we show how the simultaneous use of several regulatory instruments (information, taxation, subsidy) favours responsible environmental behaviour on the part of consumers.

International audience; Nowadays, consumers become more aware of pesticide risk problems and changes are recorded in consumer behaviour because of food safety or environmental (“sustainability”) considerations, or both. The individual consumer faces a trade-off between the utility derived from tastes and characteristics of a product, the utility of behaving “green” and the utility of healthy dieting. In this work, we used experimental markets to measure the consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for apples and apple juice produced with reduced pesticide use. In order to see the impact of different information about pesticides use, different apple types were used which are products with different levels of pesticides: Regular apples, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) apples, Organic apples. To know if the potential diversity in consumer behaviour was depending on geographical location, experimental participants were randomly recruited from the general population in Portugal and France. The protocol’s experimental design was applied in these two countries, to 207 consumers of apples and apple juice. The Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) auction mechanism was used and different apples were sold under different information conditions in a random-price sale. We show that there is a consumer WTP for pesticides use reduction (a premium for product with specific signal) and that specific information on pesticide use increases this WTP for organic product but not for IPM products. However, the most important result is that the specific information decreases the WTP for the regular product. Then it seems more rigorous to treat the results in terms of “premium against the regular product”, anticipating the loss of market share for the regular product. After showing that consumers’ premium for pesticide reduction is not independent from the product’s sensory attributes, we give the quantitative results for the consumers WTP for a pesticide reduction.

International audience

The main objective of this deliverable is to evaluate consumers’ WTP for organic products and compare both with existing brands as the exclusive signal of quality and with additional signals incorporated. We used an experimental market and we determined consumer’s willingness to pay (WTP) for produce grown with different pesticide levels. For our experimental markets conducted in Portugal (April, 2009), France (May, 2009)and Greece (February, 2010) consumers’ WTP were estimate using the apple example, for three levels of pesticide reduction: i) “Regular”: apples produced in the respect of the legal legislation. These apples don’t have any cue. ii) Integrated Pest Management (IPM): apples produced with a decrease of the pesticides’ use. In our experimental markets, IPM strategy involved three different signals with a “generic” IPM certification, a retailer brand and a protected designation of origin, (iii) “Organic”: apples produced without any synthesis pesticides. More recently, we conducted the experimental market in Netherlands (October,2010). In this country, we tested two types of organic certification: The conventional organic certification, tested in the previous countries (where no chemical pesticides have been used in 3 the production process) and a certification “Organic Plus” where no chemical and organic pesticides have been used. After showing that consumers’ premium for pesticide reduction is not independent from the product’s sensory attributes, we give the quantitative results for the consumers WTP for a pesticide reduction. It should be noted that demand for organic products seems relatively important in the EU countries that we tested. However in Netherlands, organic production seems to be less valued by the consumers. Countries where the experimental auctions were conducted do not necessarily correspond to countries where income levels are highest in the EU (specifically for Portugal and Greece). Moreover, we show that the income is not significant to explain the premium for organic products. This means that the demand for organic product is likely to grow significantly within the EU in the coming years, this demand involves a priori all segments of the population and the willingness to pay for these products is relatively large. This positive result was not observed for less restrictive alternatives (in terms of pesticide reduction), leading to limit the contribution that we can expect from consumers in favor of a partial reduction of pesticides (for example, using integrated pest management-IPM-system). In terms of pesticide reduction, "Nothing but organic" seems to be the leitmotif of European consumers, so it is reasonable to consider an important development of this mode of production in the coming years.

This deliverable presented a literature review about the role of extrinsic cues for the pesticide reduction. The results of one experimental market focused on consumers’ willingness to pay for apples with different labels (public and private labels) that signalling the reduction of pesticides were presented. We showed that the most valuated cues for pesticide reduction is organic label. In Portugal, the premium for organic is 96.4% and for France is 72.5%. IPM certifications have also a high premium. However, producer’s guarantee is more credible than retailer’s. Moreover, we noted that sensory information may have a strong impact which should not be overlooked.

The objective of the work package 4 is to investigate consumers’ knowledge and expectations regarding low pesticides products, their preferences regarding different labelling concept. Consumers’ perceptions of organic produce is also investigated. To lead this work, the deliverable D 4.1 proposes a literature review on consumers’ perceptions and expectations on health risks derived from pesticides use.

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.

Until recently, fresh fruits such as pears were provided to markets as generic products. However, these products are now differentiated by cultivars, origins and appearances, as well as by companies' production and processing methods. Therefore, we observe a lot of denominations of origin, retailers' and private labels in order to signal the differentiation to the consumers, who are often willing to pay large price premiums for products with specific attributes. Indeed the value consumers put on fruits depends on the degree of product-information that are available to them and this information derives mainly from tasting and from the label of the products. In this paper, we used an experimental auction to investigate how quality attributes information affects consumers' willingness to pay for different types of pears, particularly choosing the Portuguese "Rocha" pear variety. The BDM auction mechanism was combined with sensory analyses in order to develop an integrated approach to evaluate product attributes. The main results show that information on the products' characteristics related to food safety instantly influences consumers' willingness to pay. However, it appears that sensory intrinsic attributes related to taste finally beats the guarantee of food safety in driving the buying behaviour.