Community Supported Agriculture and Preferences for Risk and Fairness
Kévin Bernard, Aurélie Bonein, Douadia Bougherara
2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts
Urban Farm DB summary
This study investigated consumers' preferences for attributes of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) contracts, focusing on risk and fairness preferences. Two incentivized field experiments were combined with a stated choice survey, interviewing 162 CSA members face-to-face. Consumers were found to be averse to advantageous inequality (AI) towards CSA and non-CSA farmers, and to disadvantageous inequality (DI) towards non-CSA farmers, but also showed evidence of DI seeking towards CSA farmers. Consumers preferred longer contracts, driven by risk rather than fairness, and exhibited a dislike for losses and share price increases.