Combining experimental auctions with a modified home-use test to assess rural consumers’ acceptance of quality protein maize, a biofortified crop

摘要

Biofortification, or breeding food crops for improved nutritional content, is a cost effective way toimprove nutritional status. The process can, however, alter the sensory characteristics of the crop, andconsumer acceptance is essential for their adoption. The oldest biofortified crop is quality protein maize(QPM), biofortified with essential amino acids, a trait now incorporated in many recently-released varietiesin East Africa. To estimate rural consumers’ acceptance and willingness to pay (WTP) for QPM in thedispersed population of Northern Tanzania, a novel method, combining a modified home-use test with aBecker–DeGroot–Marschak experiment, was developed. The results showed that rural consumers in Tanzaniacould distinguish stiff porridge made from QPM and from conventional maize (CM). They generallypreferred the former, as expressed by higher scores during affective tests for texture, taste, and overallqualities. Further, rural consumers who were not provided with information about the nutritional benefitsof QPM were willing to pay a premium of 16% over CM, and those who were given information, 39%.The scores on the affective test and the information on QPM’s nutritional benefits were the main factorsdetermining WTP in the experiment, while no personal characteristics of the participants were found tobe significant. We conclude that QPM is, at least, as well accepted as conventional maize, and preferredfor its sensory characteristics. Information on nutritional benefits increases rural consumers’ willingnessto pay for it, so information campaigns may be effective in increasing demand for QPM varieties. However,these varieties need to be competitive for other characteristics that rural households value, in particular,field and storage qualities.