Determinants of Purchasing Behaviour for Organic and Integrated Fruits and Vegetables: The Case of the Post Socialist Economy - Organic Food and Agriculture: New Trends and Developments in the Social Sciences - page 28

*

y   ' x   (1)

i i

where y i * is an unobserved frequency of quality fruits and vegetables purchase, β' is the
vector of unknown parameters and x i is a vector of explanatory variables (which may be
continuous or discrete) denoting attributes influencing purchasing behaviour of respondent
and ε is the independently and identically normally distributed error term. The ordered
probit model tests the null hypothesis H 0 : β' k = 0 for every explanatory variable denoting
that the independent variable k does not have an effect in explaining changes in the
probability of y i .
Results from our survey provide information on the respondents' purchase frequency of
organic and integrated fruit and vegetable which is ordinal with five categories. While y i * is
unobserved, respondents actually report their purchase decisions by selecting one of the five
categories. Values for y i are 0 through 4, where 0 represents no purchase of organic and
integrated fruit and vegetables and 4 represents 2-3 weekly purchases of such produce.
The analysis builds from the following hypotheses:
i. consumers of OIFV in Slovenia are mostly influenced by the qualitative characteristics
and not by the price premium;
ii. barrier to purchase (demotivator) for OIFV organic are price and availability;
iii. the main motivator to prefer integrated and organic fruit and vegetable to conventional
is superior quality;
iv. important quality characteristics to consumers are nutritive value, freshness, flavour or
taste and general appearance.
The results of ordered probit models were interpreted by using the partial change or
marginal effects on the probability of ordinal outcome. Estimation of the empirical model
was conducted by using the LIMDEP software (Greene, 1999). In doing so, the independent
variables - other than the one being examined - were held constant at their mean values. The
calculation of quasi-elasticities is based on the results of marginal effects, i.e. partial
derivatives of the probability function (Y) . Like “standard” elasticity coefficients, quasi-
elasticity coefficients can be interpreted as the percentage impact of a unit change of an
explanatory variable on the probability of the observed outcome.

3.2 Results and discussion
Before turning to the results from the consumer choice model, this section starts with some
general results about the perception of organic and integrated fruit and vegetables by
Slovenian consumers grasped from the survey.
Despite a rather short period of organic and integrated production presence in Slovenia and
no explicit marketing activities the survey results show that consumers' awareness is
generally high. As expected the highest rate of recall has been achieved for the term “bio”
that is an equivalent for “organic” in Slovenian language. As much as 94.4% of respondents
have associated these expressions with fruit and vegetable. More than two thirds relate the
phrase “ecological” with food, whereas only 38% of the respondents were acquainted with
the term “integrated”.
An open ended question was prepared to acquire basic associations of the respondents with
the analysed categories of fruit and vegetables. Results show a rather high degree of
responds homogeneity, since the three most frequent replies represent more than 80%.
Associations are positive and generally indicate correct basic understanding. However,
results show that the respondents do not distinguish among the organic and integrated