Consumer Willingness To Pay for Proenvironmental Attributes of Biogas Digestate-Based Potting Soil

Carsten Herbes,Johannes Dahlin,Peter Kurz

doi:10.3390/su12166405

Carsten Herbes, Johannes Dahlin + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su12166405

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Abstract

Biogas from anaerobic digestion has become an important element in the renewable energy portfolio of many countries. In anaerobic digestion, digestate is produced as a byproduct. This could be used to produce fertilizers and potting soils for home gardeners substituting mineral fertilizers or peat-based products. However, this depends on consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for such products, which we investigate in this study. To this end, we conducted a discrete choice experiment (DCE) with 507 private consumers. From the 6084 decisions made, we derived Bayesian part-worth utilities using a preference share model and so calculated the WTP for different proenvironmental attributes of potting-soil products. We also assessed the influence of proenvironmental attitudes on the WTP. We discovered five distinct consumer groups in our respondents. Some show a significant WTP for proenvironmental attributes such as “organic”, “peat free”, and “without guano”. Three descriptions of digestate as a “renewable resource”, a “fermentation residue”, or a “biogas residue” elicited three markedly different WTP responses across all classes, with “renewable resource” garnering the highest WTP and “biogas residue” the lowest. Consumers with a stronger proenvironmental attitude exhibited a higher WTP for proenvironmental attributes. Our results can help marketers of digestate-based potting soils discover suitable price points for their products and design differentiated pricing strategies across consumer groups.

Highlights

Many countries have recognized the potential of anaerobic digestion (AD)
We focused on attributes that pertain to biogas digestate and can be used in communication when selling digestate-based potting soils
We assess the impact the attributes listed in Table 1 had on consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for the potting-soil products modeled in our discrete choice experiment (DCE)

Summary

Introduction

Throughout Europe, the rapid emergence of biogas plants deploying AD technology can be seen [1]. [3] reports that, globally, the electrical generation capacity of biogas plants stood at 17 GW at the end of 2017, of which roughly 12 GW came from plants in Europe, where the three biggest markets have been. As promising as biogas technology is, AD plants face waste-management challenges, namely, how to manage the large volume of digestate produced as a byproduct of plant operations. Biogas digestate and the nutrient it contains have been reported to be a problem in many countries in Europe and in China [5,6] and acceptance by farmers is often low [7]

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