WTP for baby milk formula in China : using attribute non-attendance as a priori information to select attributes in choice experiment

Abstract

It is well‐known that these nonattended attributes in choice experiments (CE) could cause some bias. A combination of two successive CEs are designed with focus on consumers’ demand for the attributes of baby milk formula in China, where the first CE includes the full set of attributes and the second excludes consumers’ self‐reported nonattended attributes in the first CE. Significant discrepancies are detected for both WTPs for an individual attribute and the total WTPs (the sum of all WTPs for individual attributes in each CE), and in most cases WTPs decrease as a result of excluding the ignored attributes. Changes in WTP are mainly driven by the variation of choice task complexity. However, there is no significant difference in the influence of excluding nonattended attributes on the WTPs for the same attended attribute in different subsamples. In addition, we also find that consumers in China have significantly higher but dispersed WTP values for imported (11.6–47.0%), organic (6.9–52.5%), and probiotics (7.3–35.5%) and sugar‐free (5.9–26.0%) attributes for baby milk formula.