Given the increased consumer interest and demand for environmentally friendly production practices, the second objective is to elicit consumers’ attitudes toward neonicotinoid pesticides and pollinators (in general), as well as explore the differences in consumers’ WTP for products with labels disclosing the absence or presence of neonicotinoids during production.
Similarities across the data points suggest sample representativeness was achieved in the experiments.
Specifically, both the online DCE and lab experiment used the same screening questions (discussed in the Study Design and Methodology section) and the demographic results were compared to U.S. We tested the comparability of the two samples. consumers nationwide to participate in the online DCE. To address this concern, we recruited U.S. As previously discussed, samples used for non-hypothetical experiments are often scrutinized for sample representativeness and hence generalizability. In this study, we use both hypothetical online discrete choice experiments (DCEs) and non-hypothetical laboratory experimental auctions to analyze consumers’ WTP for landscape plants, grown with or without neonicotinoid (also known as “neonic”) pesticides. While non-hypothetical experiments certainly mitigate hypothetical bias, they often suffer from the limitation of relatively small sample sizes or specific groups (e.g., university students, convenience samples, etc.) which may impact sample representativeness. In response to increased skepticism regarding incentive compatibility in hypothetical settings, incentivized, non-hypothetical experimental auctions and choice experiments have become popular and are frequently used by empirical economists in their field and laboratory experiments (e.g., ). However, more and more evidence has surfaced, showing that individuals tend to overstate the amount they are willing to pay for a good in a hypothetical setting compared to situations when there is financial consequentiality (e.g., ). The funder did not play any role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.Įxperimental auctions and discrete choice experiments are the two most important mechanisms to elicit consumer preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for new products (e.g., food labeling), when market data are not yet available. įunding: The authors acknowledge funding from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, Award Number: 2016-51181-235399 to HK. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: Discrete choice experiment and second-price auction data files used in this study are available from the Harvard Dataverse. Received: NovemAccepted: Published: May 20, 2021Ĭopyright: © 2021 Wei et al. PLoS ONE 16(5):Įditor: Luigi Cembalo, University of Naples Federico II, ITALY Implications for relevant stakeholders are discussed.Ĭitation: Wei X, Khachatryan H, Rihn A (2021) Estimating willingness-to-pay for neonicotinoid-free plants: Incorporating pro-environmental behavior in hypothetical and non-hypothetical experiments. Our results suggest that both hypothetical and non-hypothetical experiments are consistent in predicting the general direction of consumer preferences despite the elicitation mechanism. Individuals with attitudes expressing concern for pollinators and agreement with mandatory labeling and disclosure of neonicotinoids, showed a stronger preference for neonicotinoid-free plants. Positive attitudes toward pollinators, neonicotinoid labeling regulations, and labeling of sustainable production methods were found to be significant predictors of individual choice behavior. An incentive compatible second-price auction and a hypothetical discrete choice experiment were used to elicit individual preferences for ornamental plants grown with or without controversial (neonicotinoid) pesticides.
This study investigates the extent to which individuals’ perceptions and attitudes toward pesticides and pollinator related labeling influence their preferences for eco-labeled products.
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