CONSUMER WILLINGNESS TO PAY FOR FLUID MILK SHELF LIFE: EVIDENCE FROM AN INCENTIVIZED AUCTION EXPERIMENT
Using an incentivized auction experiment with 152 adult subjects, we investigate consumer’svaluation on remaining shelf-life attribute of fluid milk. By leveraging a between-subjects information treatment, we also examine the impact of general (industry-wide) and personal (individual-related) information about food waste on willingness to pay (WTP) for fluid milk and for remaining shelf-life. We find that consumers exhibit positive WTP for each additional day of shelf-life, but with diminishing marginal value as shelf-life increases. The evidence also suggests that providing either general information or personal information on food waste could change consumer’s overall valuation on fluid milk, but that information does not change consumers’WTP for an additional day of shelf-life. We also consider how the results of the study can be used to introduce shelf-life based pricing for fluid milk to provide a more efficient mechanism than existing static pricing regimes.