Certification Logos in the Market for Organic Food: What are Consumers Willing to Pay for Different Logos?

Organic food is often labelled with an organic certification logo to gain consumer trust in the product integrity. The number of different organic certification logos in the European market raises the question whether consumers prefer specific logos over others. The aim of this paper is to analyse consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for different organic logos to give recommendations for actors in the organic sector. Choice experiments and structured interviews were conducted with 2,441 consumers of organic food in six European countries. The data was analysed with random parameter logit models. We found great differences between the tested logos regarding the price premium that consumers were willing to pay. The highest WTP was recorded for well-known logos that consumers perceived as credible with high production standards and a strict control system. It is thus recommended for suppliers of organic food to label products with an organic logo preferred by consumers. Organisations owning an organic logo should put effort into measures for increasing consumer awareness of the logo and forming consumer perceptions of the certification scheme behind it.