Consumers’ willingness to pay for plants protected by beneficial insects – Evidence from two stated-choice experiments with different subject pools

We investigate consumers’ willingness to pay for edible and non-edible plants protected by beneficial insects and those protected by pesticides, respectively, as well as the influence of message framing on willingness to pay. We use basil, heather, and orchids as experimental objects in two stated-choice experiments (one lab-in-the-field experiment and one online experiment) conducted in Germany. In both experiments, we find strong evidence that consumers prefer plants protected by beneficial insects. Moreover, we find that message framing affects consumers’ willingness to pay, where gain framing produces greater overall willingness to pay. To check for the robustness of our results, we implemented instruments to mitigate concerns for social desirability and hypothetical bias, finding that our results are robust in terms of our key findings. This is the first comprehensive experimental study specifically on consumer’s willingness to pay for plants protected by beneficial insects. Our findings are valuable for practitioners, as the use of beneficial insects in greenhouse production is already rather common. Following our results, this information could be successfully used for marketing purposes.