Three essays on the importance of monitoring consumer attitudes and behaviors for implementing sustainable production strategies in wine sector

Abstract

This dissertation will derive on three independents, but interconnected, research papers focusing on the importance of monitoring consumer attitudes and behaviors for implementing sustainable production strategies in wine sector. The third chapter, related to the paper entitled “The importance given to food naturalness attributes by millennial university students”, explores the attributes important to millennial university students when evaluating food naturalness. This paper collects data from 372 respondents using a partial least square (PLS) methodology, it performs a standard confirmatory factor analysis for measurement and validations. The results identify one attribute linked to how the food is grown and eight attributes associated to the how it is produced and processed. The fourth chapter, “Consumer valuation of traditional wine, considering asymmetric information and sensory effects”, extends the research of the first essay and examines in what conditions traditional products are valued by millennials. This research relies on a lab experiment simulating with 165 respondents, representing the target population. The results show extrinsic cues influences consumers perception of traditional wine tasting as well as their purchasing behavior. Seemingly small differences in labels description can have substantial impacts on purchasing decisions. Finally, the fifth chapter resulted on the paper “The role of attitudes and tolerance of ambiguity in explaining consumers’ willingness to pay for organic wine”, moves away from the food naturalness concept and addresses the “attitude-behavior gap” existent between consumers’ positive attitudes towards organic products and their willingness to pay for organic wine, by suggesting that this relationship depends on the consumer tolerance of ambiguity. To tests the hypotheses, a wine lab experiment was conducted along with two questionnaires. Results show that consumer tolerance of ambiguity had a significant effect on the relationship between heathy attitude and willingness to pay. This essay concludes with a discussion of the policy and marketing implication of these findings and suggestions for future research.