Is it love for local/organic or hate for conventional? Asymmetric effects of information and taste on label preferences in an experimental auction

• We find that local and organic are partial substitutes: they both offer an alternative to the conventional food system.
• A lack of trust in the effectiveness of food regulatory agencies is a key trigger of valuation for local and organic.
• Scientific information regarding tradeoffs between labels was either disregarded or interpreted selectively.
• Some are not willing to trade local/organic for conventional apples even when they rated the latter as better tasting.
• The observed behavior was consistent with a polarization of preferences against conventional production.

We endowed consumers with conventional apples and auctioned local, organic and organic–local apples to elicit consumers’ valuation and the response to two experimental treatments: scientific information and taste. For both local and organic labels, which participants valued as partial substitutes, positive willingness to pay is conditional on distrusting the governmental food agencies. Information documenting the inconclusive scientific evidence in favor of organic and local production had mixed and small effects. Participants with positive valuation reacted to organoleptic characteristics when the new information favored the labeled apples. The observed behavior is more consistent with polarization against conventional products, rather than in favor of local and organic.