News

This artefactual field experiment explores consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) price premiums for fish products to avoid the risk and uncertainty of purchasing inauthentic produce.

The influence of subjective probabilistic beliefs, risk and ambiguity preferences is investigated. Participants’ WTP is elicited using experimental auctions, while behavioural factors are elicited using incentivised and incentive-compatible methods: the quadratic scoring rule and multiple price lists.

Results show that consumers are willing to pay a premium to avoid food fraud and purchase an authentic fish product. This premium is higher under uncertainty than risk, likely driven by ambiguity preferences which affect consumers’ purchasing under uncertainty.

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Under the Horizon Europe programme, which focuses on the future funding of food and agriculture research by the European Commission, investment in food research and innovation will see an increase. The Commission has earmarked €10 billion for the food sector, with an emphasis on food safety, which has €1.68 billion confirmed. This embraces quite a wide area of research which could include the safety issues arising out of food fraud.

Read more about the programme on FoodNavigator.

The FoodAuthenticity research page has recently been updated with a number of additional research reports and SOP references. About 12 projects have been added, covering topics a wide range of toics, including IR and Raman determination of vegetable oil species, feasibility of spectral imaging for food authenticity, proteomics and metagenomics methods, and a review of methods for distinguishing mechanically recovered meat. An SOP  for calibration and use of IR and Raman methods for vegetable oils has also been added to our document site at http://documents.foodauthenticity.uk.