Exploring environmental consciousness and consumer preferences for organic wines without sulfites

In recent years, owing to increasing interest in health in relation for food quality, consumer preference for organic products has gradually been moving from an elitist behavior to quite widespread consumption. This trend is also apparent for the wine industry, which has gradually been adopting organic production methods. Motivated by the increasing importance of consumer health protection, this paper analyzes consumer interest in buying organic wines with no additives, evaluating whether and to what extent consumers are willing to pay a higher price for organic wine with no added sulfites. With the aim to gain detailed knowledge about issues related to consumer health an ordered logit model was used to investigate the probability of achieving a premium prices as a function of the socioeconomic characteristics of consumers and the product attributes. Results indicate that environmental consciousness, and curiosity lead consumers to pay a higher price for these wines while naturalness and designation of origin are the attributes of organic wines positively related to the probability of paying a premium price for wine with no added sulfites. The results also show that inappropriate information discourage consumers from paying a price differential for wine without sulfites. The scientific value and originality of the paper include consumer perception of the health benefits of organic wines without additives. The outcomes confirm that consumers who are sensitive to environmental and quality issues are willing to pay a premium for quality food, and that wider information about wine with no added sulfites is required for effective price differentiation. Being Sulfite addition to food is an issue of increasing relevance in the agro-food sector, this study analyzes for the first time the consumer preference for organic wines by considering how the presence of additives in wine affect the purchasing behavior of consumers. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.