Consumers’ willingness to pay for ethical consumption initiatives on e-commerce platforms

Journal of Integrative Agriculture

Zhifeng GAO¹  Xian-hui GENG²  Ning AN²  Emmanuel KIPROP³  Er-peng WANG⁴ 

[1] Correspondence GENG Xian-hui;College of Economics and Management, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, P.R. China;Food and Resource Economics Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0240, USA;School of Economics and Management, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, P.R. China;

关键词: ethical consumption;    apples from poverty-stricken areas;    WTP;    interval regression;   

DOI  :  

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Despite China’s fast-growing e-commerce and its great achievement in promoting poverty alleviation through consumption, little is known about Chinese consumers’ online ethical consumption. Using the payment card elicitation method, this paper designs a within-subject survey and a between-subject survey to investigate Chinese consumers’ quality perception and preference for apples from poverty-stricken areas. The results show that before “information shock”, emphasizing that taste and safety attributes of apples from poverty-stricken areas are the same as the conventional ones, Chinese consumers on average are willing to pay a 31% premium for apples from poverty-stricken areas. After “information shock”, both the within-subject and between-subject designs show a minimal drop of the premium, implying that the ethical attribute is the main motivation for buying apples from poverty-stricken areas. The regression results show that quality perception of private attributes has significant effect on consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for apples from poverty-stricken areas, and trust in government supervision of e-commerce plays an essential role in motivating online ethical consumption.

【 授权许可】

Unknown