How does health-related information impact willingness to pay for olive oil? Insights from an incentivised lab experiment among Moroccan and Tunisian consumers
Résumé
Models of consumer choices have operated based on the principle of the rationality of individuals. Consumers are supposed to be maximizing their utility. However, there is increasing awareness that consumers choices are driven by both conscious and unconscious factors. Recent technological devel-opments now make it possible to incorporate biometric data into models of consumer choices. We introduce a protocol for a laboratory experiment aimed at understanding consumers preferences for olive oil and the impact of information on their willingness to pay for this good. The protocol combines an auction mechanism à la Becker–DeGroot–Marschak with the measurement of biometric data, in-cluding eye-movements and facial expression. We compare consumer choice models incorporating different sets of biometric factors and discuss their goodness of fit. While the baseline tobit model allows good prediction of consumers’ willingness to pay for olive oils, the models incorporating bio-metric data have a higher predictive power.