Consumers’ trade-off between nutrition and health claims under Regulation 1924/2006: insights from a choice experiment analysis

Viscecchia, R., Nocella, G. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9625-6315, De Devitiis, B., Bimbo, F., Carlucci, D., Seccia, A. and Nardone, G. (2019) Consumers’ trade-off between nutrition and health claims under Regulation 1924/2006: insights from a choice experiment analysis. Nutrients, 11 (12). 2881. ISSN 2072-6643 doi: 10.3390/nu11122881

Abstract/Summary

The aim of this paper is to investigate consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for functional mozzarella cheese whose health benefits (reduced fat and enrichment in omega-3) are communicated by using nutrition claims (article 8) and health claims (articles 13 and 14) of the EU Regulation 1924/2006. In order to achieve the stated objective a choice survey was developed and administered to a sample of Italian respondents. The product attributes and attribute levels included in the choice experiment were obtained from in-depth interviews conducted with stakeholders working on the development of this new product in the Italian region of Puglia. Results show that many participants were not aware of functional food. Marketing segmentation performed via latent class analysis indicates that the development of this hypothetical product should be based on the addition of naturally enriched omega-3. In terms of health communication under Regulation 1924/2006, heterogeneity of preferences of the nine identified segments reveals that respondents have a clear preference for products from the Puglia region, for the combined nutrition claim over single nutrition claims and for the reduction of disease health claim (article 14) over the health claim (article 13). In monetary terms, willingness to pay for health claims is higher than nutrition claims.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/87491
Identification Number/DOI	10.3390/nu11122881
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Life Sciences > School of Agriculture, Policy and Development > Department of Agri-Food Economics & Marketing
Publisher	MDPI
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