Country-of-origin preferences for organic food

Abstract

Consumers in almost any country seem to prefer domestic food compared to foreign food. One reason for this finding is probably consumers believe foreign food to be of lower standard than domestic food. In the last years, international agreements about organic products have led to harmonization of regulations allowing organic food produced in one country to be sold as organic in another. A hypothesis is then whether consumers view a foreign food product with the identical organic label as a domestic counterpart as equivalent substitutes. This study uses an online choice experiment with conventional and organic veal to investigate country-of-origin preferences for organic meat. The results show that despite the fact that the organic label assures consumers that the meat has been produced under the same organic regulations the willingness to pay for organic meat depends greatly on the country of origin. Hence, common international labels for organic food do alleviate the huge skepticism toward foreign food.