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Correspondence: Xiaoli Fan, 515 General Service Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta T6G 2H1, Canada. Email address: [email protected]
Introduction
Locally grown is increasingly becoming an important characteristic that consumers consider when making food purchasing decisions. Consumers often perceive locally produced food to have higher quality with superior attributes such as freshness and flavor. Local foods are also associated with such benefits as reduced environmental impacts and stronger local economies (King, Gómez, and DiGiacomo 2010; Martinez et al. 2010). These perceived benefits may influence consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for local foods.
A large body of literature has studied consumer preferences and WTP for local foods in the United States (see Martinez et al. [2010] and Feldmann and Hamm [2015] for detailed overviews). Most studies find that consumers are willing to pay a price premium for local foods. However, these studies implicitly assume that consumers perceive local foods to have superior quality compared with nonlocal foods. Little is known about WTP for local foods taking into account differences in consumer perception of food quality between local and nonlocal foods. In addition, extant literature has not examined the effect of locally grown information on consumer perceptions of quality and how these perceptions are related to consumer WTP. Studying these issues can help farmers and supply chain channel members develop superior strategies for marketing local foods.
In this article, we study consumer WTP and quality perceptions of locally grown versus nonlocal broccoli varieties. We use the term “New York Grown” to represent “locally grown.”1 The broccoli sector is an excellent setting for studying such issues. Broccoli, like many U.S. fresh fruits and vegetables, is produced mainly in California (U.S. Department of Agriculture, National Agricultural Statistics Service 2017), whereas the majority of the demand occurs on the East Coast of the country. However, potential water shortages in California, higher transportation and handling costs, and increasing consumer demand for local food have encouraged industry stakeholders to increase broccoli production on the East Coast, including in New York State (NYS) (Atallah, Gómez, and Björkman 2014).
One challenge of growing broccoli on the East Coast is the lack of appropriate varieties suited to eastern growing conditions. Most broccoli consumed in the United States is harvested from varieties specifically developed for California...