How are organic food prices affecting consumer behaviour? A review

- Review of consumer behaviour research regarding organic food prices.
- Majority of studies on willingness-to-pay for organic food.
- Very few studies on price learning and price knowledge of consumers are existent.
- No studies on affective processes of consumer behaviour regarding price.
- Results of studies on price elasticity and on willingness-to-pay are contradictory.

This article reviews research on consumer behaviour regarding the price of organic food published from January 2000 to December 2013, in order to identify the current state of research and research gaps. The publications were classified into stimulus-response or stimulus-organism-response paradigm based studies. Organism-internal processes were further divided into 'affective', 'cognitive' and 'intentional' processes. Moreover, for a systematic review the categories 'price elasticity', 'price perception and evaluation', 'price knowledge', and 'willingness-to-pay' were built. The majority of studies were based on a stimulus-organism-response paradigm. 20 studies in the sample analysed the price elasticity of demand and reported partly contradictory results. There were no studies on affective processes in the sample. A solid body of knowledge exists on the cognitive processes 'price perception and evaluation' while very few studies investigate 'price knowledge'. The majority of studies were concerned with the willingness-to-pay for organic food and yielded mixed and contradictory results. The explanatory power and conclusiveness of research is impaired by weak sampling techniques (e.g., convenience sampling, sampling at few locations) and data collection methods. The improvement of sampling techniques, the increase of comparability of results and the deepening of analyses is recommended.