Are Consumers Willing to Pay a Premium for Pure Rice Noodles? A Study of Discrete Choice Experiments in Taiwan

Yu-Hui Chen,Chun-Yuan Chiang,Kang Ernest Liu,Kai-Han Qiu

doi:10.3390/su12156144

Abstract

Most consumers in Taiwan have never eaten pure rice noodles (PRNs) and some may mistakenly treat corn starch-based rice noodles as PRNs. This study examines consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for PRNs using discrete choice (DC) experiments with a blind tasting test to understand consumers’ ability to identify PRNs with varying rice content on the basis of their appearance and taste. Collecting data from the Taipei metropolitan area, our DC experimental results of both pre- and post-experiment conditions show that Taiwanese consumers do prefer PRNs and their WTP for PRNs was strengthened. A latent class model highlights that attribute preferences tend to differ by group and thus rice content ratios should be properly labeled so that consumers can make a better choice according to their preferences. Our WTP estimates also imply that offering tasting trials to consumers is an effective marketing strategy to encourage potential purchases of PRNs for the rice noodle industry.

Highlights

Food safety is a major consideration, for consumers, who value high-quality food products and are willing to pay a premium for safe products [1,2,3,4,5,6]
Our empirical results show that the standard errors are statistically significant for ASC and pure rice noodles (PRNs) before the tasting test but for PRNs and ADD after the experiment, revealing heterogeneity only in some attributes in the experiment
The estimated coefficients using the random parameter logit (RPL) model show that the variables of ASC, PRNs, ADD, and PRICE were statistically significant both before and after the tasting tests, whereas DoO was significant only before the experiment

Summary

Introduction

Food safety is a major consideration, for consumers, who value high-quality food products and are willing to pay a premium for safe products [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Some consumers consider food additives a risk factor that may result in food safety concerns [18,19,20]. Natural foods are considered relatively safe and are becoming increasingly popular, making additive-free foods an effective marketing strategy [21,22,23,24]. The willingness to pay (WTP) a premium for natural foods has motivated producers to distort product claims to boost their profits [8]

Objectives

Results

Discussion

Conclusion