Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/260110 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
Working Paper No. 2014:13
Publisher: 
Lund University, School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Lund
Abstract: 
This paper quantitatively analyzes the importance of taste versus health in food demand, as well as the effect on consumers' experienced taste of the non-intrinsic value of healthy labels. Our analysis is based on taste experiments and Vickrey second price auctions on potato chips and bread. Our findings imply a large positive effect on demand for potato chips from higher taste scores: when consumers' experienced taste from potato chips improves by one unit, the average willingness-to-pay (WTP) for a 150 gram bag of chips increases by 25 euro cents. The estimated effect from taste on bread demand is smaller, but may be sizeable for subgroups of consumers. Our evidence suggests that demand for chips and bread is unaffected by nutrition – the effect of the healthy label on WTP is not statistically significant. Finally, we find that consumers' experienced taste of a food is unaffected by the food carrying a healthy label.
Subjects: 
willingness-to-pay for food
revealed preferences
taste
non-intrinsic value
healthy label
JEL: 
D12
D83
Q18
Document Type: 
Working Paper

Files in This Item:
File
Size





Items in EconStor are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.