Consumers’ willingness to pay for ethical consumption initiatives on e-commerce platforms

• Main Authors: Er-peng WANG, Ning AN, Xian-hui GENG, Zhifeng GAO, Emmanuel KIPROP
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2021-04-01
• Series: Journal of Integrative Agriculture
• Subjects: ethical consumption; apples from poverty-stricken areas; WTP; interval regression
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2095311920635845

Despite China’s fast-growing e-commerce and its great achievement in promoting poverty alleviation through consumption, little is known about Chinese consumers’ online ethical consumption. Using the payment card elicitation method, this paper designs a within-subject survey and a between-subject survey to investigate Chinese consumers’ quality perception and preference for apples from poverty-stricken areas. The results show that before “information shock”, emphasizing that taste and safety attributes of apples from poverty-stricken areas are the same as the conventional ones, Chinese consumers on average are willing to pay a 31% premium for apples from poverty-stricken areas. After “information shock”, both the within-subject and between-subject designs show a minimal drop of the premium, implying that the ethical attribute is the main motivation for buying apples from poverty-stricken areas. The regression results show that quality perception of private attributes has significant effect on consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) for apples from poverty-stricken areas, and trust in government supervision of e-commerce plays an essential role in motivating online ethical consumption.