Revisiting consumers’ valuation for local versus organic food using a non-hypothetical choice experiment: Does personality matter?

We investigate consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for local and organic foods using a non-hypothetical choice experiment. Past studies have observed that beliefs and attitudes affect consumers’ preferences for local and organic productions claims. However, in psychology, personality is an important factor in explaining individuals’ attitudes and behavior, since personality traits are stable features which capture how individuals think, feel, and behave. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate the interaction between personality traits and consumers’ preferences for both local and organic food products. We used applesauce as the product in question, and we implemented the MIDI (Midlife Development Inventory) scale to capture respondents’ personalities. We focused on the “Big Five” personality traits: openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism. We find that personality traits can be sources of heterogeneity in consumers’ preferences for locally produced, but not for organic applesauce.