Consumers willing to pay a premium for sustainably produced rice, a new study shows

Through behavioral market experiments, they elicited consumers’ willingness to pay for rice produced and labeled under the national sustainable production standard “VietGAP” in a supermarket in Can Tho City in the Mekong River Delta. The researchers also examined the conditions that make consumers willing to pay more for certified-sustainable rice. They found that consumers were willing to pay price premiums of 9% for certified sustainably produced rice on top of the price of regular rice. These premiums even further increased up to 33% when they were informed about what the label on sustainably-produced products mean and where exactly the rice was produced. Consumers that consider themselves as environment- and health-conscious tended to be most responsive to sustainable production labels.