Zahlungsbereitschaft und Verbraucherpräferenzen für Produkte mit unterschiedlichen Öko-Zertifizierungszeichen

摘要

Since July 2010, prepacked organic food produced in the EU must be labelled with the new mandatory EU logo for organic food. In this paper we analyse the willingness-to pay (WTP) of German consumers for products with different voluntary organic certification logos to draw recommendations for the future use of organic logos. Data was collected in choice experiments with 405 consumers, based on which a number of random parameter logit models were estimated. According to our results, German consumers are willing to pay a considerable price premium for products with the Demeter logo as well as for products with the ‘Bio-Siegel’ compared to products just labelled with the word ‘organic’. The high acceptance of the Bio-Siegel among German consumers shows that the new EU logo could potentially be successful, given the two logos indicate the same. However, the new EU logo must be promoted so that consumers recognise and understand its meaning and its equivalency with the Bio-Siegel. The WTP for Demeter products was found to be particularly high among regular consumers of organic food. It is thus recommended that producers of Demeter products display the Demeter logo in addition to the mandatory EU logo.