Effects of Values and Personality on Demand for Organic Produce

Personality and human values have shown effects on consumer preferences and willingness to pay. This paper analyzes simultaneously the impact of human values and personality on the demand for organic tomatoes applying open-ended choice experiments. Results show that consumers make a distinction between conventional and organic tomatoes, such that human values have a differential impact with regard to predicting demand for products associated with organic labels. Consumers with strong individualistic domains of hedonism and stimulation are more likely to have a higher demand for organic, the same holds for consumers with the strong collectivist domain conformity, and those values that regard both (security and universalism). Also, consumers distinguish between conventional and organic tomatoes, such that personality has a differential impact with regard to predicting demand for organic products. The more agreeable the consumer, the higher the demand for organic tomatoes. In addition, results indicate that when modeled simultaneously, values are more stable in affecting demand compared to effects resulting from personality. Overall, results indicate that human values and personality are able to explain a portion of the variability of demand.