The Marginal Willingness-to-Pay for Health Related Food Characteristics

Abstract

Food consumers often face a trade-off between taste and nutrition. This paper examines how consumers value food characteristics that simultaneously affect taste and nutritional value. As a case study, we focus on Swedish consumer preferences for food characteristics in breakfast cereals, hard bread, and potato products. We estimate the value attached to fat, fiber, salt and sugar and the value of easily accessible nutritional information provided by a nutrition symbol. The results suggest consumers have context-dependent preferences for food characteristics; consumers who prefer nutrition over taste for some ingredient in a specific product may prefer taste over nutrition for other products. Consumer values of food characteristics also seem sensitive to changes in the mix of characteristics in a product. For instance, additional fiber may be positively valued for products high in taste enhancers, such as salt. Consumers may therefore prefer nutrition over taste as long as the product is tasty.

Keywords: consumer economics, hedonic pricing, willingness to pay, food characteristics, health

JEL Classification: D12, I1