Consumer Purchase Preferences for Carnosine Enhanced Pork in Canada - A Functional Food

Abstract

In this study, we examine Canadian consumers’ purchase preferences for a particular kind of functional pork – enhanced carnosine pork. Carnosine is a naturally occurring dipeptide that exhibits anti-aging properties (McFarland and Holliday, 1994). Carnosine is a relatively unknown nutrient and so we are interested in understanding the relative merits of informing consumers of enhanced carnosine levels through a carnosine health claim, a carnosine nutrient content claim or including carnosine in the nutrition facts table. As a basis of comparison we include two other possible labels, a protein nutrient content claim, and a Verified Canadian Pork (a label created by industry identifying food safety, animal care, traceability and farm to table quality assurance attributes of the production system) label. A survey including a choice experiment was used to collect data, from which conditional logit, random parameters mixed logit, and latent class models were estimated for the probability of consuming pork with different label (and actual) attributes. Results suggested that heterogeneity exists among consumers, mostly related to different attitudes more than socio demographic characteristics. Potentially, due to the unfamiliar nutrient (carnosine), consumers discounted the value of pork labeled with the carnosine health claim or the carnosine nutrient content claim. As compared to carnosine (as a functional attribute), consumers preferred the identification of protein content. In terms of labeling carnosine, consumers had higher willingness to pay for carnosine content included in a nutrition facts table than for nutrient or health claims for carnosine. This is potentially due to lack of understanding of who verifies the health or nutrient content claims. Higher level of nutrition knowledge was associated with higher willingness to pay for different pork attributes.