Urban households’ willingness to pay for milk safety in Samsun and Trabzon provinces of Turkey
ISSN: 0007-070X
Article publication date: 24 July 2019
Issue publication date: 4 September 2019
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine urban households’ willingness to pay (WTP) for milk safety and to analyze the factors affecting WTP premiums using data obtained from surveys conducted in Samsun and Trabzon provinces, Turkey.
Design/methodology/approach
Contingent valuation and censoring methods including the error-dependent bivariate Heckman SS model were used for estimating WTP for milk safety and its effective factors, respectively.
Findings
The study indicates that 68 percent of the households were willing to pay 0.35 per liter for improving the safety of milk. The model results show that satisfaction with food safety standards, being married and full-time employment have statistically significant positive effects on the WTP for ISO-certified milk. However, purchasing milk from farmers or open-air markets, age, having a child six-year old or younger, and high school or higher education have statistically significant negative effects on the WTP for ISO-certified milk.
Research limitations/implications
The main limitation of the current study is that only urban consumers’ WTP and effective factors for milk safety were examined in two provinces of Turkey.
Practical implications
More rigorous implementations of food safety standards, traceability systems and effective educational campaigns could promote households’ food safety awareness and increase their demand for milk safety.
Social implications
Knowing what factors are involved in consumer WTP is extremely important for decision makers to create new social policies in the region or country.
Originality/value
A similar study has not been conducted in Turkey. The novelty of this study is the specification and robust estimation of three different but competing models to reveal the wide range of WTP amounts for safe milk.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This study was supported by both the Scientific and Technological Council of Turkey (the program of 2219) and Ondokuz Mayis University (the program of 1922). The authors are especially grateful to the respondents for answering the questionnaires. The authors would also like to thank Şahinde Şili, Nur İlkay Sonmez and Nevra Alhas Eroğlu for conducting the questionnaires and Laura L. Alfonso and Amanda Hollar (The University of Georgia) for editing the paper in English.
Citation
Bozoglu, M., Bilgic, A., Huang, C.L., Florkowski, W.J. and Topuz, B.K. (2019), "Urban households’ willingness to pay for milk safety in Samsun and Trabzon provinces of Turkey", British Food Journal, Vol. 121 No. 10, pp. 2379-2395. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-03-2018-0174
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited