Authors
Assistant Professor, Departmentof Food Sciences, University of Guilan, Iran
Abstract
With growing the health concerns,as well as some arisen environmental problems have proved the importance of the organic agriculture and safe food production valid. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the factors influencing urban consumers’ willingness to pay for green chicken meat in Urmia city in 2015. The study’s population consisted of all Urmia citizens, from whom a sample of 283 individuals were selected using the data from the pretest and Mitchel and Carson’s sampling method. This study is practical (applied research) and it is also descriptive and correlational. The data were collected by field research via questionnaire. The content and face validity of the research tools were confirmed by university professors and experts in the field and Cronbach’s Alpha (0. 83) was used to confirm the reliability of the questionnaire. For data analysis, SPSS v. 20, Microsoft Office EXCEL 2010, SHAZAM and STATA software packages were used. The results of Logit and Tobit model indicated 25. 85 and 21. 7 percent higher consumers’ willingness to pay for each kilogram of green chicken as compared to industrial chicken. Variables of chicken consumption per week, attitude toward the general component of shopping, the component of healthy shopping and awareness of the danger of antibiotics were significant at the one percent level. For the purpose of familiarization and acculturalization regarding the consumption of green products, it is necessary to pay more attention to food security and to increase public knowledge and awareness of purchasing these products by media and virtual advertisements and using promotional brochures and training workshops.
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