Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
6. Measuring preferences for food production systems
The advent of specialized stores offering organic produce and products and the allocation of
supermarket self-space to organic produce and products attest to the increasing demand for
food and food products produced under alternative production systems. The emergence of
alternative food production systems and the discussion in the public domain concerning the
health, environmental and social benefits they offer vis a vis conventional production systems
may have, at the very least, sensitized consumers about the opportunities that exist for making
food purchasing decisions based on the type of production system and its perceived benefits.
Additionally, the promotion of healthy eating habits and the need for increased consumption
of fruits and vegetables [26-28], plus the well-publicized need for environmental conservation
[19] amplify the salience and relevance of differences between the food production systems in
terms of their health, environmental and socio-economic impact. Consequently, our objective
here is to assess consumer attitudes toward food produced under the following food produc‐
tion systems - conventional agriculture, sustainable alternatives and organic along five criteria
- contribution to environmental conservation, food safety, food quality, contribution to
wellness and contribution to community economic development by using Analytic Hierarchy
Process (AHP).
6.1. Data and methodology
The sample was designed following the protocol described by [29]. It was drawn proportionate
to population size by county in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. After specifying
the sampling frame parameter, the required sample was purchased from Survey Sampling Inc.
Data were collected from a random sample of 252 respondents, which represents a cooperation
rate of 30 percent. Researchers designed and formatted an analytic hierarchy questionnaire to
collect data via a telephone survey. Enumerators asked consumers to compare three food
production systems: conventional, sustainable and organic in terms of which consumers
would prefer farmers to use in producing the fresh fruits and vegetables that they purchase
or consume; taking into consideration environmental, food safety, food quality, wellness, and
community development issues.
This study employed Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to derive a measure of an individual
consumer's preference for production systems in terms of the selected criteria which is
consistent with previous research conducted in the U.S. [30]. The AHP, which was developed
by [31], is one of the most commonly applied multi-criteria decision-making techniques. AHP
is a subjective tool for analyzing qualitative criteria to generate priorities and preferences
among decision alternatives (For more detailed information about AHP, see [32-34]. The AHP
model, illustrated in Figure 3, was used to assess consumers' preferences for production
systems in terms of environment, food safety, food quality, wellness and community devel‐
opment.
Cluster analysis was used to separate consumers into groups by: age, education and employ‐
ment status. The aim of cluster analysis is to classify observations into relatively homogeneous
groups called clusters, such that each cluster is as homogeneous as possible with respect to the
