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

doi:10.1016/S2095-3119(20)63584-5

Journal of Integrative Agriculture

2021, Vol. 20

Issue (4): 1012-1020 DOI: 10.1016/S2095-3119(20)63584-5

Section 3: Innovation and inclusive development for poverty alleviation

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

WANG Er-peng¹, AN Ning², GENG Xian-hui², Zhifeng GAO³, Emmanuel KIPROP²

¹ School of Economics and Management, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing 211816, P.R.China
² College of Economics and Management, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing 210095, P.R.China
³ Food and Resource Economics Department, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL 32611-0240, USA

Abstract
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摘要

尽管迅速发展的电商极大促进了消费者对贫困地区农产品的消费需求，但是我们对中国消费者的在线道德消费行为却知之甚少。本文设计了一个包含组内和组间比较的价值评估方法，研究了中国消费者对电商平台上扶贫苹果的质量感知和消费偏好。结果显示，在“信息冲击”之前，消费者愿意为扶贫苹果支付平均31%的溢价。“信息冲击”后，即假设苹果质量没有差异，组内和组间设计的结果都仅有很小的溢价下降，说明道德属性是消费者购买扶贫苹果的主要动机。有趣的是，质量感知仍然对扶贫苹果的支付意愿有显著影响，而消费者对政府电子商务监管的信任对激励在线道德消费有重要作用。

Abstract

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.

Keywords: ethical consumption apples from poverty-stricken areas WTP interval regression

Received: 25 April 2020 Accepted:

Fund: We thank the comments from the editor and anonymous reviewers. The authors acknowledged the support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71903088) and the Project of Humanities and Social Science of the Ministry of Education of China (19YJC790132).

Corresponding Authors: Correspondence GENG Xian-hui, E-mail: gengxh@njau.edu.cn

About author: WANG Er-peng, E-mail: youxuels@163.com;

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WANG Er-peng, AN Ning, GENG Xian-hui, Zhifeng GAO, Emmanuel KIPROP. 2021. Consumers’ willingness to pay for ethical consumption initiatives on e-commerce platforms. Journal of Integrative Agriculture, 20(4): 1012-1020.

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