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2. PHD Thesis / Tesis PHD
3. Institute for Environment and Development / Institut Alam Sekitar dan Pembangunan (LESTARI)

Title:	An analysis of factors affecting willingness-to-pay and purchase of organic vegetables and fruits in Malaysia: case study in Selangor and Federal Territory
Authors:	Siddique Ahmed (P64445)
Supervisor:	Chamhuri Siwar, Prof. Emeritus
Keywords:	Organic foods Willingness-to-pay Purchase Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia -- Dissertations Dissertations, Academic -- Malaysia
Issue Date:	22-Jan-2017
Description:	In Malaysia, organic foods continue to be one of the fastest growing segments of the retail food market but suffering from many drawbacks, including import dependency, high price, mass unfamiliarity, illiteracy of organic characteristics among consumers and widespread unavailability. This thesis will focus on the three aspects of WTP for organic products – factors affecting willingness-to-pay (WTP); WTP for organic vegetables and fruits in monetary terms and familiarity of organic logos and the effect of different country of origin organic logos on WTP. Data was collected from selected urban areas of Selangor state and Kuala Lumpur of Malaysia through a questionnaire survey assisted by enumerators. Among 500 questionnaires distributed, 342 were returned with 330 usable. To explore the factors of WTP a conceptual model was developed based on Theory of Planned Behavior and tested via structural equation modeling. Result shows that about 58% of the variances of WTP for organic products can be explained by health concern, affordability, subjective norms and convenience and WTP has a significant impact on Actual Purchase with a low degree of precision. To find out the monetary WTP, comparative prices of 20 vegetables and fruits were presented to the respondents and subsequently they were asked to state their WTP in a monetary value. The result shows that the mean and median WTP for organic vegetables and fruits are 98% and 76% higher than the price of the conventional alternatives. To find out the familiarity of organic logos and country of origin effect, 10 different countries’ organic logos were presented to the consumers to see whether they are familiar to organic logos or not and results show that although Malaysians are not very much familiar with organic logos but they respond differently to different country of origin logos and there exists moderate positive relationship between Asian organic logos and consumers’ WTP but no significant relationship between other organic logos and WTP. Each model that was proposed in this study has achieved the validity, reliability and fitness level prescribed. The findings suggest four strategies - ensuring organic quality, reducing price, intensive advertizing and developing efficient distribution system to increase the market efficiency of organic products. The price of the organic products should not be more than double of the conventional alternatives and informative campaign and advertisement through media should be increased to make the organic logos familiar to the Malaysian consumers. Also land areas for organic products need to be increased to decrease the import dependency of the organic market in Malaysia.,Ph.D.
Pages:	195
Publisher:	UKM, Bangi
Appears in Collections:	Institute for Environment and Development / Institut Alam Sekitar dan Pembangunan (LESTARI)

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