Do consumers understand health claims on extra-virgin olive oil?

Health claims have been introduced in food labelling to support consumers' awareness of healthy food choices and to enhance a healthy diet. Even though many countries around the world have developed legislation and guidelines to regulate the introduction of health claims on food labels, there is the evidence that many consumers do not understand the meaning of these claims. This study analyses whether Italian consumers really understand authorized health claims on extra-virgin olive oil and what are the drivers of such understanding. An Olive Oil Health Claims Understanding index was constructed and embedded in a structured questionnaire, which was then administered to a representative sample of Italian household members who are responsible for food shopping (N = 1,030). Results from the survey showed that only 36% of the respondents understood the meaning of the authorized health claims on extra-virgin olive oil. Moreover, the findings confirmed that the understanding of health claims is related to socio-demographic, personal and psychographic characteristics of consumers, as well as to their attitudes toward using food as medicine. Outcomes also proved the central role of nutrition knowledge in affecting understanding of health claims.

Consumer Misuse of Country-of-Origin Label: Insights from the Italian Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Market.

Providing information to consumers through the label is a means for food companies to inform consumers about product's attributes, including the country of origin (COO). In the EU, COO labeling has been made mandatory for several categories of food products, to enable consumers to make informed choices at the point of sale. In particular, Regulation (EU) No 29/2012 has introduced a mandatory country-of-origin labeling system for extra virgin olive oil (EVOO). In the present study, conducted in Italy, we test whether there is a price differential associated with the COO information for EVOO. To this end, we employ a hedonic price model and data about the purchase of EVOO products collected from 982 consumers at the supermarket checkout. Having interviewed these consumers, we also assess the share of EVOO consumers that correctly identify the country of origin of the product purchased. Our findings point out that, in Italy, the EVOO with domestic origin, indicated on the label, benefits of a premium price equal to +35% compared to the product labeled as blend of European EVOOs, while a discount of -10.8% is attached to EVOOs from a non-European origin. A significant share of consumers in our sample (19.04%) is, however, unable to correctly identify the origin of the EVOO purchased. This label misuse mostly occurs among consumers who report that they had purchased Italian EVOO, while they had actually purchased a blend of European EVOOs. Female and more highly educated consumers are less likely to misuse label information about the product's origins.

How does the land market capitalize environmental, historical and cultural components in rural areas? Evidences from Italy.

Farmland can supply a wide variety of ecosystem services, i.e. provision of food and fibre, as well as regulating, supporting, recreational, aesthetic and cultural services. In addition, farmland can be characterized by the presence of anthropic elements, i.e. archaeological sites and historical rural buildings, from which the community can obtain further non-material benefits, namely cultural heritage values, recreation and tourism, etc. However, all these services and land components can be strongly influenced by different levels of farming intensity, a condition that can damage their capacity to supply the related functions (public goods). Such land-market failures could be adjusted by acquiring information on how the above non-farming characteristics, i.e. environmental, historical and cultural determinants, are capitalized in farmland value when farming intensity varies. To this aim, a real estate survey was carried out in Italy in order to investigate the land market of traded farms cultivated under specific crops and located in two areas with different levels of farming intensity. The analysis considered farming and non-farming determinants of selling price and used a hedonic model method based on the ordinary least squares regression corrected for spatial autocorrelation. The results highlighted that the farming determinants were capitalized in selling price as expected in both areas, while the impacts of the non-farming characteristics were extremely diversified between the areas. In the extensively farmed area, the environmental, historical and cultural determinants tended to be positively capitalized, thus favouring their preservation. However, in the intensively farmed area, these were positively or negatively capitalized according to whether or not their overexploitation could allow increased yields, respectively. In yet other cases, some non-farming determinants were not capitalized at all in either area. These trends provided useful insights for the design of ad hoc market-based schemes able to enhance land market functioning and the maintenance of these components in agricultural areas with different levels of farming intensity.

Consumers' willingness to buy innovative traditional food products: The case of extra-virgin olive oil extracted by ultrasound.

Innovation is fundamental for all agri-food companies to increase competitiveness, however the industrial process of extra virgin olive oil (EVOO) has changed very little over the last few decades. As it is a traditional food product (TFP), the main obstacle to innovation is precisely its traditional nature. According to the literature, any innovation regarding TFPs should be considered in terms of the specific product, and market success mainly depends upon the perceptions and traits of consumers. The present study evaluated the willingness of consumers to buy an innovative EVOO obtained by ultrasound extraction (ultrasonic EVOO) through an ordered logit model. The sample was composed by 961 EVOO consumers. The average age of respondents was 39 and the majority were female (55.4%). At first, the respondents reacted almost equally to the idea of buying ultrasonic EVOO, with 49% of the sample stating they were not willing to buy the product and 51% stating that they were willing to. The major insight from our study is that consumers who are the most willing to buy the product are those who formed a positive quality perception after being introduced to the key characteristics of the new product. In addition, the willingness to buy seems to be higher for consumers who prefer EVOO with a fruity flavour and without a sweet taste, for consumers who attach great importance to the taste of food and with a higher than average educational level. This predominant role of consumers' perception in the case of innovative TFPs should, thus, be researched further.