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Rural Bangladeshi consumers’ (un)willingness to pay for low-milled rice: Implications for zinc biofortification

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Title Rural Bangladeshi consumers’ (un)willingness to pay for low-milled rice: Implications for zinc biofortification
 
Creator Herrington, Caitlin L.
Maredia, Mywish K.
Ortega, David L.
Taleon, Victor
Birol, Ekin
Sarkar, Md Abdur Rouf
Rahaman, Md Shajedur
 
Subject biofortification
consumer behaviour
trace element deficiencies
milling
rice
willingness to pay
zinc
 
Description First published: 15 September 2022
Zinc deficiency is a severe public health problem in Bangladesh. We examine the effects of nutritional information on rural consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for two ways to increase zinc intake through rice, the main staple crop–low-milling that gives rice grains a distinctive light brown color (a visible trait) and sets it apart from the culturally preferred high-milled white rice grain and biofortification of rice with increased zinc content (an invisible trait), which is also low-milled to retain maximum zinc content. Results of our economic experiments suggest that with nutritional information, consumers are willing to pay a premium of 4.6% for zinc biofortified rice compared to non-biofortified rice, when milled at the same level. However, results confirm the strong preference for high-milled rice by Bangladeshi consumers who discounted low-milled rice by 8%–10% even after receiving information on the nutritional benefits of biofortified or low-milled rice. We find that consumers’ WTP for the two high-zinc-low-milled rice types (biofortified and non-biofortified) is positively correlated with being a female, more educated, belonging to households engaged in non-farm activities and with children under 5 years of age. Results point to the importance of nutritional awareness campaigns for increasing zinc biofortified and low-milled rice consumption and guiding the targeting strategy for such campaigns. Given the consumer preference for high-milled rice, this study also points to the need for exploring the rice fortification strategy to address the challenge of malnutrition.
 
Date 2023-01
2023-01-22T18:18:54Z
2023-01-22T18:18:54Z
 
Type Journal Article
 
Identifier Herrington, Caitlin L.; Maredia, Mywish K.; Ortega, David L.; Taleon, Victor; Birol, Ekin; Sarkar, Md Abdur Rouf; and Rahaman, Md Shajedur. 2022. Rural Bangladeshi consumers’ (un)willingness to pay for low-milled rice: Implications for zinc biofortification. Agricultural Economics 54(1) 5-22. https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12739
0169-5150
https://hdl.handle.net/10568/127776
https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12739
 
Language en
 
Rights CC-BY-4.0
Open Access
 
Publisher Wiley
 
Source Agricultural Economics