Consumers' Willingness to Pay for Food Safety Attributes of Nectarines

Summary

In this study a discrete choice experiment was used to determine how much are consumers willing to pay for food safety attributes of nectarines in the Polokwane Municipality area of Limpopo, South Africa. Specifically the Food safety certification, appearance, country of origin and price were the main attributes of interest and they were all significant (without accounting for heterogeneity amongst the consumers preferences), then interaction terms were introduced to determine which socio-economic factors have the greatest impact on the willingness to pay of the consumers and we found age and income to be the main variables affecting heterogeneity amongst the consumers. This study has policy implications and the necessary recommendations are discussed in the thesis.