Will people pay more money for certified organic vegetables? And, if so, how much more?

BIOGRAPHIES

Haoyu Yang

Hello everyone, my name is Haoyu Yang, and our group’s topic is related to organic food. The reason for me to choose this topic is the experiences of attending UBC farm in the last term. During that experience, the worker of the farm told us a lot about the sustainable system of agriculture, the new farming practices they apply could decrease the pollution and make the vegetables more healthy. Also, when I was buying vegetables in the market of China, the price of organic vegetables often higher than regular vegetables. However, there still a lot of people choose the organic one. These experiences make me curious about the effects of organic vegetables on people’s purchase willingness.

Shaochen Cui

Hello everyone, I came from China and I am very excited to share my thought about sustainability and organic food with you. The first time I realized the problem of sustainability is when I was 15 years old. I went to a supermarket with my grandma and my grandma told me to only buy the vegetables labelled with the “pesticide-free” and the price is almost double. At that, I started to wonder why could the farmers who grew “pesticides free” could earn twice as much as the normal farmer. As a result, I chose to do research that is related to organic food which includes the “ pesticides free” vegetables.

Zheng Gong

My name is Zheng, for me sustainability is a continuous problem for later generations, environmental resources are growing scarce, the earth might punish our later generation, for protecting profits of our later generation, we should embody the principle of sustainable development. With the development of technology and agriculture, some new agricultural method was invented, for example, organic food and greenhouse design, so we should save resources or develop new technology for sustainable development, this is the reason of we choose organic food for our topic.

Shiqi Li

Hi~ I'm Shiqi Li. I come from a beautiful city, Changsha. Nowadays, we are living in an advanced world where a lot of organic food is produced, but we want to know the potential risk that organic food brings to us as well as its benefit, then we want to carry out further research about organic food especially the sustainable way of aquaculture. As a result, we chose this topic as a guide for us to know more about organic food.

Yimiao Xia

Hello everyone. My name is Yimiao Xia. You can call me Lisa Xia. I am very interested in how new farming practices influence the food price market and I want to further explore people's attitudes towards consuming requirements. I hope you could join us on the journey of figuring out the myth of organic vegetables.

ABSTRACT

Nowadays, more and more people prefer organic vegetables because organic vegetables are perceived as containing fewer contaminants and more nutrients (Hoefkens et al., 2008). However, the price difference between organic vegetables and normal ones also exists. Hence, our research question is, will people pay more money to buy organic vegetables? If so, how much more? To find out the result, our group use a qualitative method to collect and analyze data. And the purpose of this study is to investigate how students think about organic vegetables and how much more money they accept to purchase these vegetables. As we all know, organic agriculture brings many positive effects not only for the environment but also for society and the market. From our results of interviews, all participants understand the benefits of purchasing organic vegetables. For example, eating organic vegetables could help people keep healthy and improve their life quality. Besides, buying organic vegetables could also promote the progression of sustainable agriculture. In conclusion, our research focuses on participants' opinions, attitudes, and experiences related to organic vegetables.

METHOD

Our group spent seven days online to find participants who are willing to join us. After that, we informed them of the interviews' requirements and had their confidential agreement in advance. Our team members interviewed twelve participants. Each interview lasted about 15 minutes, and the meetings are held on WeChat and Facebook. We recorded the interview with participants' permission. Then, we use the open codes to code the transcript and analysis of the data. The codes we use are about participants' knowledge, opinions, attitudes, experiences, and methods to help the poor purchase organic vegetables. Due to COVID-19, our group applied online interviews to finish the process of data collection. We use Wechat, Zoom, and Facebook to do our interviews. Also, we have set 12 interview questions for participants. To conclude, our groups mainly applied content analysis and open codes to reach our goal.

RESULTS

After the analysis, we find several themes about our data, which include participants' knowledge about the benefits of purchasing and eating organic vegetables, their opinion of whether people should buy the organic vegetables, their attitudes towards buying organic vegetables, their personal experiences of buying organic vegetables, and their suggestions to help the poor to buy organic vegetables. We find all participants know the benefits of eating organic vegetables; for example, it's useful for keeping healthy, beneficial for the market and essential for sustainability. And they all agree to pay more money to buy organic vegetables instead of the regular ones with lower prices. However, almost 2/3 of the participants think the price differences between organic vegetables and normal vegetables shouldn't be too big. If the price difference is too significant, then the price/quality ratio will be low; hence most people would still choose regular ones. But a small percentage of them don't buy organic vegetables. They think organic products are expensive, and one participant even believe that organic vegetables are the same as the non-organic, the only difference is the price.

DISCUSSION

Our results showed that most participants know the advantages of purchasing and eating organic vegetables; for example, it's beneficial for health and good for the environment. To produce organic vegetables, pesticides are avoided, and most organic foods are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or synthetic food additives. This kind of consumption could be referred to as sustainable consumption, using the products without harming the environment so that both present and future generations' needs could be satisfied (Gillaspy, 2013). Based on our results, we find that sustainable consumption is accepted by people. However, we find that most participants express that they can't accept a large difference in price, which indicates that people not only care about the food quality but also care about price/performance ratio. For the contribution, we believe the finding that participants have rich knowledge about the benefits of organic vegetable purchasing shows participants' willingness to purchase organic vegetables. However, the price/performance should also be an important factor for people to consider. We hope that future researchers could enlarge the scope of participants, which could have a more precise description of people's attitudes towards sustainable consumption.

REFERENCE

Gillaspy, R. (2013, September 25) Sustainable Consumption: Definition and Complexities.

Hoefkens, C., Verbeke, W., Aertsens, J., Mondelaers, K., & Van Camp, J. (2009). The nutritional and toxicological value of organic vegetables consumer perception versus scientific evidence. British Food Journal, 111(10), 1062-1077. doi:10.1108/00070700920992916