How much do consumers care about farm labour exploitation?

This paper contributes in the discussion about the trade-offs between fair working conditions and the competitiveness of local agricultural products. We use the Choice Experiment methodology to capture the determinants of individual well-being and behavior by asking consumers to choose between alternative states of the world that vary attributes relevant to a fair labour certification scheme such as inflation of food prices, income of farm labourers, percentage of food imports and unemployment rate. This allows us to estimate how consumers’ wellbeing differs with different levels of farm labourers income given all other trade-offs that consumers might face with the introduction of stricter policies regarding farm labour. The results confirm the interest of Greek consumers towards fair working conditions in agriculture since, holding other parameters constant, choice probabilities are responsive to changes in the level of daily wages.