Abstract:

Olive oil in the Mediterranean is closely associated with the traditional dietary, religious, and local cultures. This paper aims to assess the impact of olives’ religious and cultural values on consumers in nontraditional markets. Through the choice experiment, this study examines the influence of religious attribute labels and cultural information about olives on consumer preference in California. The analysis adopts a mixed logit model to reflect the heterogeneity of consumer preferences. The results reveal that the respondents prefer olive oil labeled with religious and cultural values, which is particularly pronounced among respondents with lower levels of education. However, the impact of cultural information on olives has not been detected. The subjects are found to be interested in the landscapes, backgrounds, and traditional cultures related to olives and olive oil. Religious and cultural value labels for olive oil can satisfy the consumers’ potential need for foods associated with cultures. This study suggests that olive oil’s religious and cultural values can effectively promote product differentiation and consumption. This research focuses on the issue of how the cultural meaning embedded in traditional foods is received when the foods are consumed in different cultures, namely the possibility of food communicating meaning.

Keywords:

Consumer behavior; cultural information of food products; religious information of food products; values of traditional food culture.

How to Cite:

Tamaki Kitagawa, Kiyokazu Ujiie, Yuki Maruyama and Hiroko Isoda. Impact of Cultural and Religious Attributes of Olive Oil on Consumers’ Willingness to Pay in the USA. [ref]: vol.23.2025. available at: https://refpress.org/ref-vol23-a7/