Consumer preferences and willingness to pay for the health aspects of food

Abstract

Agri-food systems in the Czech Republic are currently undergoing a profound transformation toward high-value products. Appropriate policies are needed to guide this transformation, presupposing good understanding of consumer preferences. Having established a general framework for the analysis of food choice and quality perception, second part of the paper gives overview of results of stated preference evaluation studies conducted in the Czech Republic. The objective of secondary data analysis is to evaluate consumer preferences and willingness to pay for the food quality with the special attention to an evaluation of consumer preferences for health aspects of the food. The consumers’ relative preferences toward the different dimensions of a product’s quality are measured from the consumers’ perspective via their preference scores on various dimensions of quality derived from Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). Price premium consumers are willing to pay for the high quality product is investigated using Contingent valuation method (CV). In general, the empirical evidence supports the hypothesis that health ensuring and enhancing characteristics together with sensorial characteristics significantly affect consumers’ preferences for food and most consumers are willing to pay a price premium in order to ensure required quality of food.

Keywords

• food quality
• consumer preferences
• AHP
• WTP
• health aspects