Consumers’ preferences for biodiversity: a choice experiment on wine

In recent years consumers’ concerns for environmental impact of food production has significantly increased, also due to food sustainability, food safety and food security issues. Environmental concerns are steering consumers to better understand the impact of production processes, and to increase consumers’ demand for products that carefully consider environment protection. A number of certification systems for environmental-friendly products have been created, as occurred for water-saving labels, fishery sustainable labels and others. Among several environmental issues, the protection of biodiversity has recently gained popularity both in public opinion and in scientific debate. Biodiversity in the vineyard has been seen as a limiting factor to be eliminated for a long time, but recent research proved how it can affect the production process in different positive ways. At our knowledge, there is a gap in literature on assessing consumers’ willingness to pay for agricultural practices able to maintain or implement biodiversity in the vineyards. This paper implements a Choice Experiment on wine consumers to estimate their WTP for biodiversity conservation practices in vineyards. The survey was conducted by direct interviews in a wine tasting event in an italian winery located at Montefano, in the Marche Region. According to the main results, biodiversity issue in wine certification seems to be positively accepted by consumers, who are willing to pay a premium price. Moreover, the WTP for this attribute does not exist only for medium-high price wines, but also for low-price wines, revealing a consumer’s sensitivity for biodiversity issue over a range of products with different prices. In addition, quality of the wine and price remains important attributes in purchasing choices, and this is a precise productive indication, that is the consumer considers very carefully the wine's reputation for quality.