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1 – 10 of over 3000For a long time the European geographical indication (GI) regulation has been of great interest to economists and policymakers. To justify exclusive European regulation it is…
Abstract
Purpose
For a long time the European geographical indication (GI) regulation has been of great interest to economists and policymakers. To justify exclusive European regulation it is necessary to prove the positive value of a GI quality signal (i.e. label), which is often achieved by quantifying its monetary value for the consumers. But even though a large number of literary contributions already deal with this question, they lack the evaluation of overall effect sizes for the GI label. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to quantify and evaluate the overall marginal consumer willingness to pay for the European GI label.
Design/methodology/approach
To reach this aim, a meta-analysis is used for which a literature survey had been carried out in order to determine the GI label effects (LEs). In addition to previous works, this paper not only includes a meta-analysis, but also implements a heterogeneity analysis to distinguish between the LEs of individual GI standards. To eliminate study- and product-specific determinants of heterogeneity, moderator variables are used.
Findings
The empirical results indicate that consumers have a highly significant and positive marginal willingness to pay for GIs. However, the marginal willingness to pay differs significantly between the individual GI standards and indicates great heterogeneity between the protected products.
Originality/value
As an extension to previous studies and meta-analysis; this paper includes the most extensive GIs meta-data set so far, and conducts for the first time an independent heterogeneity analysis to distinguish between the LEs of individual GI standards and implements a moderator analysis to eliminate study- and product-specific determinants of heterogeneity from the GI effects.
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Negative effects of crime encompass several different dimensions. As a result, there is no existing methodology capable of dealing with all the relevant issues simultaneously and…
Abstract
Purpose
Negative effects of crime encompass several different dimensions. As a result, there is no existing methodology capable of dealing with all the relevant issues simultaneously and the interpretation of the estimates currently available lacks theoretical foundation. The purpose of this paper is to provide a unified view of the meaning and relationship between the various dimensions of the welfare cost of crime and violence available in the literature.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper develops a theoretical model of crime and illustrates the different interpretations of welfare costs of crime and violence within this unified framework. This theoretical benchmark is then used as a benchmark to review the empirical literature on the topic.
Findings
The analysis suggests that the most commonly estimated dimension of the welfare cost of crime − related to the total loss associated with crime − although relevant as an illustrative tool, is not very useful from a policy perspective. The literature should therefore move closer to the idea of estimating marginal costs and benefits in order to become policy relevant.
Research limitations/implications
Policy-oriented research related to optimal law enforcement should move in the direction of estimating the marginal willingness to pay of individuals for reductions in crime. This should be compared to the marginal cost of alternative policies in order to guide public policy in the area.
Originality/value
This survey rationalizes in economic terms the estimates from the existing methodologies, highlights some of their limitations, and points out potential directions for future research. It provides one of the first unified views of the various dimensions of welfare cost of crime and violence that have been presented in the literature.
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Khalid Joya, Nurul Nadia Ramli, Mad Nasir Shamsudin and Nitty Hirawaty Kamarulzaman
Consumers are giving greater attention to the selection of food due to the improvement in income and urbanization. Meanwhile, in recent years, the vegetables' farmers in Malaysia…
Abstract
Purpose
Consumers are giving greater attention to the selection of food due to the improvement in income and urbanization. Meanwhile, in recent years, the vegetables' farmers in Malaysia have been reported using an excessive quantity of pesticides. The vegetables exported to Singapore and China have been rejected in 2018 and 2017 due to the presence of excessive levels of pesticides. Such incidences have created massive concern to improve the safety standard of the vegetable industry. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate consumers' willingness to pay for food safety attributes of tomato.
Design/methodology/approach
Discrete choice experiments has been used, and 490 respondents have completed the survey.
Findings
Results suggested that consumers were willing to pay RM4.18 more for wholesome tomato relative to slightly damage tomato. Consumers also were willing to pay RM2.75 more for organic tomato relative to inorganic tomato. They were also willing to pay RM2.30 and RM1.29 more for certified and tomato sold at supermarket relative to uncertified and tomato sold at the wet market, respectively. The willingness to pay for safety attributes of tomato also varied according to the income, age and education level of the consumers.
Research limitations/implications
If the farmers can respond effectively to the changes in consumers demand, it can be translated into business opportunities.
Originality/value
This research able to provide relevant information related to the consumers' willingness to pay for food safety attributes of tomato in Malaysia.
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Walid Marrouch and Nagham Sayour
This study aims to examine the impact of local air pollution on housing prices in Lebanon.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the impact of local air pollution on housing prices in Lebanon.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors apply a hedonic pricing approach using a unique data set from Lebanon. To account for non-linearities in pricing, the authors use three different functional regression forms for the hedonic model approach. The authors also deal with potential omitted variable bias by estimating a hedonic frontier specification.
Findings
The authors find that, in all specifications, air pollution negatively and significantly affects housing prices. The estimated marginal willingness to pay for a one microgram per cubic meter change in particulate matter (PM10) concentration ranges between 2.88% and 3.18% of mean housing prices. The authors also provide evidence of a negative pricing gradient away from the city center, landing support for the monocentric urban development hypothesis.
Research limitations/implications
Given the lack of a data set linking household socioeconomic characteristics with housing data, the authors only consider the first-stage hedonic model.
Practical implications
The proposed hedonic pricing regression approximates a housing pricing equation that can be used by policymakers.
Social implications
The findings suggest that pollution is a significant factor in household behavior in Lebanon.
Originality/value
This paper adds to the scant literature studying the effects of air pollution on housing prices in developing countries. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to study the impact of pollution on housing prices in a country in the Middle East and North Africa Region.
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Simone Mueller Loose and Hervé Remaud
The study seeks to assess the impact of two different corporate social responsibility (CSR) claims, relating to social and environmental dimensions, on consumers' wine choice…
Abstract
Purpose
The study seeks to assess the impact of two different corporate social responsibility (CSR) claims, relating to social and environmental dimensions, on consumers' wine choice across international markets. It analyses how point of purchase CSR claims compete with other food claims and their awareness, penetration and consumers' trust are examined.
Design/methodology/approach
A discrete choice experiment with a visual shelf simulation was used to elicit consumer preferences and to estimate marginal willingness to pay for CSR and other food claims across the UK, France, Germany, the US East Coast, the US Midwest, and Anglophone and Francophone Canada.
Findings
CSR claims relating to social and environmental responsibility have a similar awareness, penetration and consumer trust, but differ in their impact on consumer choice, where environmental corporate responsibility claims benefit from a higher marginal willingness to pay. Consumer valuation of CSR claims significantly differs across international markets, but is consistently lower than for organic claims.
Originality/value
This is the first cross‐national study that analyses the impact of CSR claims on consumer food choice relative to other food claims using large representative consumer samples. The strength of the paper also pertains to the utilisation of innovative choice experiments covering a large range of choice relevant product attributes.
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Brano Glumac and Thomas P. Wissink
This paper aims to report on homebuyers’ preferences and willingness to pay for installed home photovoltaic systems. Their influence on the market position of a dwelling is…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to report on homebuyers’ preferences and willingness to pay for installed home photovoltaic systems. Their influence on the market position of a dwelling is relatively unknown. Considering that expected lifespan of photovoltaic systems is at least 25 years, it is likely that many dwellings with a photovoltaic system will enter the housing market.
Design/methodology/approach
Few houses with installed photovoltaic systems have been sold in the market to date. Lack of real market data imposes a method based on the stated preference data. Therefore, the general preferences toward photovoltaic systems are determined by a discrete choice model based on responses of 227 homebuyers in the Eindhoven region, The Netherlands. Further, the model estimates were used to assess the indirect willingness to pay for home photovoltaic systems. This initial willingness to pay is further reassessed with the direct willingness to pay collected in an open-ended questionnaire format.
Findings
Results of the model show that the homebuyers’ preferences for home photovoltaic systems are large and significant. In addition to general preferences, this article reports on the taste heterogeneity carried out by separating observations based on the respondents’ characteristics. For example, photovoltaic systems are more appealing to homebuyers in more urban or central neighbourhoods. Further, the results of the direct survey lead to the conclusion that people are probably willing to pay close to the replacement value of the system and only 22 per cent of all respondents did not want to pay anything for the installed photovoltaic system.
Research limitations/implications
These findings are exploratory and they raise a number of questions for further investigations, such as those regarding the real estate value of the installed photovoltaic systems. The reported findings must be regarded as local, thus further research is necessary to understand the impact on European housing markets.
Practical implications
Preferences and willingness to pay for home photovoltaic systems can provide a variety of economic, social and political recommendations to different interested parties such as homeowners, buyers, realtors, retailers, energy companies and governments. For instance, a homeowner would like to know what would be the effect of a photovoltaic system on the housing market.
Originality/value
As per the knowledge of authors, this is the first paper to estimate the impact of an installed photovoltaic system on housing choice, measured by stated choice data in the local housing market. It expands the existing body of knowledge for increasingly important issues of valuing and measuring preferences for photovoltaic systems installed on dwellings.
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This paper aims to understand housing demand of urban Indian households in terms of housing and household-level characteristics. Because a house is a bundle of certain…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to understand housing demand of urban Indian households in terms of housing and household-level characteristics. Because a house is a bundle of certain characteristics which vary across houses, each characteristic has an implicit price. Finding this implicit price for certain important characteristics is the first objective of this study. The second objective of the paper is to compute the income elasticity and price elasticity of housing demand for these cities.
Design/methodology/approach
To achieve comparable estimates, household-level data from India’s National Sample Survey Organisation housing surveys for the years 2002 and 2008-2009 have been used. A hedonic price function is estimated using ordinary least squares (OLS) and Box-Cox functional forms to estimate the implicit prices of housing characteristics. This exercise is attempted for owned and rented houses separately. Demand function required for computing the elasticities, uses the hedonic price index derived from the implicit prices and household characteristics.
Findings
The study finds housing demand to be income elastic and price inelastic for the six cities across both the time periods.
Originality/value
Firstly, this study includes housing characteristics such as individual access to drinking water, modern sanitation facility, separate kitchen, condition of the structure, existence of a road with street light and whether the house is in a slum or non-slum area in the hedonic price function. These variables were not used in any of the earlier studies pertaining to India. Secondly, it uses the Box-Cox non-linear form to derive the hedonic price function, a specification not used earlier. Thirdly, this is the first study analysing housing demand across the six largest Indian cities.
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Mara Thiene, Luigi Galletto, Riccardo Scarpa and Vasco Boatto
Under investigation is Prosecco wine, a sparkling white wine from North‐East Italy. Information collection on consumer perceptions is particularly relevant when developing market…
Abstract
Purpose
Under investigation is Prosecco wine, a sparkling white wine from North‐East Italy. Information collection on consumer perceptions is particularly relevant when developing market strategies for wine, especially so when local production and certification of origin play an important role in the wine market of a given district, as in the case at hand. Investigating and characterizing the structure of preference heterogeneity become crucial steps in every successful marketing strategy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the sources of systematic differences in consumer preferences.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper explores the effect of inclusion of answers to attitudinal questions in a latent class regression model of stated willingness to pay (WTP) for this specialty wine. These additional variables were included in the membership equations to investigate whether they could be of help in the identification of latent classes. The individual specific WTPs from the sampled respondents were then derived from the best fitting model and examined for consistency.
Findings
The use of answers to attitudinal question in the latent class regression model is found to improve model fit, thereby helping in the identification of latent classes. The best performing model obtained makes use of both attitudinal scores and socio‐economic covariates identifying five latent classes. A reasonable pattern of differences in WTP for Prosecco between CDO and TGI types were derived from this model.
Originality/value
The approach appears informative and promising: attitudes emerge as important ancillary indicators of taste differences for specialty wines. This might be of interest per se and of practical use in market segmentation. If future research shows that these variables can be of use in other contexts, it is quite possible that more attitudinal questions will be routinely incorporated in structural latent class hedonic models.
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Giordano Ruggeri, Chiara Mazzocchi and Stefano Corsi
Consumers' concerns about the environmental impacts of food production have been increasing over the last years, and several certification systems for environment-friendly food…
Abstract
Purpose
Consumers' concerns about the environmental impacts of food production have been increasing over the last years, and several certification systems for environment-friendly food products have been created. This research investigates wine consumers' preferences for a certification that guarantees the use of agricultural practices that better protect the biodiversity in the vineyard during the production of grapes.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a choice experiment, we investigate consumer preferences and willingness to pay for biodiversity-friendly wines on a sample of 334 wine consumers. The experiment was carried out by direct interviews at a wine-tasting event in an Italian winery located in the Franciacorta area, in northern Italy. A between-subject design and two different questionnaires were used, one presenting the Brut bottle and one the Satén bottle.
Findings
Estimates from a mixed logit model reveal that consumers are generally willing to pay a higher price for biodiversity-friendly wines, but they have stronger preferences for organic certification and quality indications. When consumers perceive a specific product as having high quality, i.e. Satèn, they might be less willing to pay for further environment-friendly certifications. Moreover, preferences depend on sociodemographic and attitudinal variables such as gender, wine consumption frequency, wine education and knowledge degree of the labels.
Originality/value
This paper broadens the knowledge about consumer preferences and willingness to pay for biodiversity-friendly wines, focusing on a specific market segment of Italian sparkling wines.
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Ming‐Hui Huang, Jyun‐Cheng Wang, Shihti Yu and Chui‐Chen Chiu
E‐businesses using enterprise resource planning systems as the information infrastructure generate a tremendous amount of information, including information about customers…
Abstract
E‐businesses using enterprise resource planning systems as the information infrastructure generate a tremendous amount of information, including information about customers, suppliers, markets, transaction costs, the prices at which products are bought and sold, and order‐fulfillment rates, etc. To turn the information contained in these systems into marketable information goods would be a key to gaining a competitive advantage and optimizing market exchange efficiencies. Treating involved organizations as an end‐to‐end network and applying an economic analysis, five propositions are developed to capture this value‐added process. Conditions for market equilibriums are specified.
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