Sustainability information, taste perception and willingness to pay: The case of bird-friendly coffee

Using bird-friendly coffee as an example, we investigated how sustainability information affects willingness to pay directly, to what extent this effect is mediated by taste perception and whether the effect of the sustainability information on taste perception is due to positive affect and/or due to a feeling of moral satisfaction. Stability of these effects was studied across two coffee tastings. Participants tasted two coffees prepared from two bird-friendly coffees, either after being informed about bird-friendly coffee and that the coffees they were about to taste were bird-friendly or in a control condition where tasting was blind. After each tasting, participants were asked to indicate their willingness to pay for the coffee using the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak procedure. Taste perception, moral satisfaction with drinking the coffee, and affective valence were recorded using questionnaires. Emotional responses were also identified by analyzing facial expressions. Results indicated that when tasting the first coffee served, information about the bird-friendly production affected willingness to pay (WTP) positively both directly and mediated by taste perception, where the effect of the information on taste perception was in turn mediated by affect valence and moral satisfaction. When tasting the second coffee served, however, a positive impact on taste perception via increased moral satisfaction and a negative taste inference from the information resulted in a net zero effect of the information on WTP. The results provide new insights on how sustainability information can affect WTP via effects on taste perception and the dynamics of these effects over repeated choice and consumption situations.