Can Willingness-To-Pay Values be Manipulated? Evidences from an Experiment on Organic Food in China

Xiaohua Yu, Yan Binjian and Zhifeng Gao

No 169402, GlobalFood Discussion Papers from Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen, GlobalFood, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development

Abstract: Human behaviours are driven by two different types of motives: implicit and explicit motives. Psychologists have developed two main tools, namely time pressure and cognitive load, to disentangle the two motives. It implies that the values of willingness to pay (WTP) are sensitive to time pressure and cognitive load levels in practice. An experiment with 233 students is conducted in China to study the willingness to pay for organic food with consideration of different time pressures and cognitive load levels. Results show that (1) increasing cognitive load could significantly reduce consumers’ WTP for organic food; and (2) time pressure does not have significant impact on WTP values. Such results remind us of being particularly cautious about the cognitive load situations of respondents during a WTP survey. Otherwise, the WTP results are unstable and inconvincible.

Keywords: Agribusiness; Consumer/Household Economics; Institutional and Behavioral Economics; Marketing; Research Methods/ Statistical Methods (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 27
Date: 2014-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-cbe, nep-cna, nep-exp and nep-mkt
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:gagfdp:169402

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.169402

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