An Evaluation of Consumers’ Preference on Food Safety Certificate and Product Origins: A Choice Experiment Approach for Fresh Oranges in Metropolitan Bangkok, Thailand

Abstract

We examine the consumers’ evaluation of food safety attribute for domestic and imported fresh oranges by a choice-based conjoint analysis in metropolitan Bangkok in Thailand. Our experiment introduces a ‘food safety label’ for oranges of both production origins as a hypothetical certificate in order to evaluate the consumers preference on an explicit information provision of food safety regulation. The estimation result of our survey conducted in 2010 shows that respondents assign a significantly higher willingness to pay value on domestic than on imported ones. And consumers evaluate food safety label positively for oranges from each production origin, however, consumers’ evaluations are indifferent in terms of their willingness to pay for the food safety label between production origins. These findings demonstrate that food safety information provision on products is preferred. And the indifference in terms of willingness to pay for the labels from various origins implies competitiveness with good food safety management and weakness due to mismanagement of the safety regulation on domestic fresh products.