Heterogeneous preferences and market potentials for biofortified foods in sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence from Nigeria

Abstract

In recent time, biofortified staple crops have been bred to correct for Vitamin A deficiency in sub-Saharan African countries. In this study, we used a cross sectional preference data from a survey of 750 food buyers in Nigeria to access heterogeneous preferences and market potentials for biofortified foods. We used Hybrid Latent Class (HLC) framework to jointly examine respondents’ choice component with their responses to attitudinal questions preventing potential endogeneity and measurement error. The result indicate that consumers are willing to pay an extra premium of ₦l50 for biofortified garri over the normal price of white or yellow garri for health gains, thus suggesting that there is a potential market for biofortified foods in Nigeria. Our results show that consumers who had higher preference for biofortified foods attached a greater preference for higher vitamin A content of the product. We also observed that respondents were faced with regional heterogeneity. We observed that respondents in the urban area were more willing to pay for biofortified food quality attributes. We observed that in order to increase the demand for biofortified foods in Nigeria, a key strategy is to ensure that consumers have access to the products. In addition, the public should be better informed on health implication of consuming foods fortified with vitamin A such as biofortified products.