EGE 12TH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON APPLIED SCIENCES
ARE CONSUMERS WILLING TO PAY MORE FOR SUSTAINABLE CULTIVATED MUSHROOMS?
Yayıncı:
Academy Global Publishing House
Adopting sustainable production practices in mushroom cultivation is considered important in terms of meeting changing market demands and eliminating environmental concerns. In particular, it is anticipated that the increasingly dominant role of the healthy nutrition factor in consumers' food preferences will lead to an increase in the demand for sustainably grown mushrooms. However, it is a matter of curiosity how much more consumers will be willing to pay for renewable cultivated mushrooms produced with sustainable practices compared to conventional ones. This study seeks to answer the question, “Are consumers willing to pay more for sustainably produced cultivated mushrooms?” Determining consumers' willingness to pay and analysing their behaviours accurately are important for market segmentation, investment decisions and competitive strategies. The primary data of this study consist of data obtained from face-to-face surveys with consumers living in socio-economically different districts of Izmir province. Within the scope of this study, consumers' willingness to pay for cultivated mushrooms produced by conventional and sustainable production methods was analysed in terms of socio-economic variables. Consumers' willingness to pay for cultivated mushrooms produced by conventional and sustainable production methods was determined using tobit model. The variables used in the Tobit model are age, education, gender, marital status, household income, number of individuals in the household, frequency of product purchase, place of product purchase and product price. In general, the willingness to pay for 1 kg of cultivated mushroom produced according to different production methods was calculated as 4.74 USD for organic certified mushroom, 4.16 USD for good agriculture certified product and 3.16 USD for conventional product.
