Chinese Consumers’ Willingness to Pay for Almonds as a Healthy Snack

Abstract

This study uses 360 choice experiment data gathered in five large Chinese cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Wuhan and Kunming during the traditional Chinese holidays of spring 2016 to analyze respondents’ acceptance of almonds as a healthy snack food. The purchasing impact of Country of origin (COO), price, organic, brand, freshness, taste and consumer specific profile of education and their food expenses were examined. Mixed logit model was applied and the results show that: 1) there existed positive purchase attitudes toward the health featured almond snacks; 2) California imported almonds were preferred to the domestic Chinese almonds and the imported almonds were valued higher; 3) when purchase almonds, Chinese respondents were found to be unlikely price sensitive; and 4) their purchase decision was found to be unlikely affected by organic, crop freshness and the decision was made without the influence of respondents’ educational background.