Consumer Willingness to Pay for Climate-Smart Wheat

A new climate-smart wheat with biological nitrification inhibition (BNI) has the potential to increase the sustainability of Canadian agriculture by reducing nitrogen leaching into groundwater systems and nitrous oxide emissions from nitrogen fertilizer. On top of the fertilizer savings from growing BNI wheat, it may be possible for Canadian producers to earn a premium through a climate-smart certification. This thesis explores the consumer demand for a climate-smart certification on pasta. Current research shows evidence of willingness to pay (WTP) for environmentally friendly food products among several consumers groups, but the market potential of products bearing a new climate-smart certification has not been explored. If WTP for climate-smart certified food is found to be high, it may help to support the creation of a climate-smart certification which could help incentivize Canadian producers to adopt climate-smart agriculture production practices. In March 2025, an online survey of 5045 consumers across Canada, Italy, the United States, and the United Kingdom gathered consumer preferences through a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to evaluate WTP for climate-smart pasta. Attributes in the DCE included information on greenhouse gas emission reductions, presence or absence of a climate smart certification, and the organization providing certification. Prior to the DCE, respondents were randomly allocated to information treatments highlighting either local or global benefits of climate-smart agriculture or the control group. These information treatments were designed to assess whether the framing of climate-smart agriculture impacts consumer demand. Then, multinomial logit, mixed logit and latent class models were estimated in order to measure the consumer demand. Canadian consumers were found to be willing to pay an additional premium of 20% for a climate-smart label and 12% for a GHG emissions reduction claim. Similar premiums were found across all the countries studied. Additionally, we found that consumers had a strong dislike for climate-smart labels certified by the government and certified by retailers. Consumers were indifferent towards an environmental organization label and exhibited both positive and negative preferences for the pasta company certification, depending on the market.