The Effects of Production Systems and Natural Season of Tomatoes on Consumer Willingness To Pay: Evidences From Turkey

Abstract

Tomato is a mostly used ingredient of the world kitchens which therefore leads to important health jeopardy due to chemicals used in the production. Tomatoes produced under a certification control address to the consumer concern about their health due to what they eat. This paper aims at eliciting consumers' in and out of season willingness to pay for tomatoes produced with alternative systems, GAP, ecological and local, over conventionally produced tomato in urban Turkey. Heckman models were used to estimate coefficients that are necessary to calculate willingness to pay under the Ravenswaay and Hoehn approach. The data was collected from 541 consumers on the basis of the revealed preference across Turkey, from seven geographical regions. Heckman models were estimated with the dependent variable of household demand and the independent variables of price, expenditure and dummy variables representing production systems. It was detected that Heckman models should be used for the estimation of tomato demand due to statistically significant lambdas. Consumers in Turkey are willing to pay for tomatoes produced with alternative systems and tend to pay a price premium for tomatoes produced with alternative systems in the natural production season.