The Direct and Indirect Effects of ‘Locally Grown’ on Consumers’Attitudes towards Agri-Food Products

improved quality, healthiness, and variety in their food (Verbeke 2005, IDDBA 2008). Accordingly, demand for agri-food products with credence attributes (e.g., place of origin, organic, locally grown, environment-friendly, and fair trade) is increasing rapidly (Nimon and Beghin 1999, Loureiro and Umberger 2007, Basu and Hicks 2008, Darby et al. 2008, Kanter, Messer, and Kaiser 2008, Froelich, Carlberg, and Ward 2009). This growing consumer demand has resulted in an extensive literature, studying a range of issues with credence attributes. Many studies suggest that credence attributes have an impact on some consumer groups’ buying intentions, specifically on the amount they are willing to pay to acquire products. However, examining why consumers are willing to pay a premium price for credence attributes is notably less prevalent in the literature. For example, Lusk et al. (2006) recognized this in the context of country-of-origin labeling. In this study, we aim to begin filling this gap by analyzing consumers’ motivations for buying agri-food products that are “locally grown.”We clarify whether consumers are willing to pay a premium for “locally grown” products because they value the “locally grown” attribute itself, or because they mainly value “locally grown” as a signal of other desirable product attributes, such as freshness or its environmental friendliness. To disentangle consumers’ motivations for buying “locally grown” products, we propose and test a model that separates the direct effect from the indirect effect of “locally grown” on consumers’ attitudes towards a product. Similar to the distinction suggested by Van der Lans et al. (2001), we define direct effect as the impact of “locally grown” on consumers’ attitudes towards a product, without any mediation. We instead define indirect effect as the impact of “locally grown” on consumers’ attitudes towards a product mediated by their belief The Direct and Indirect Effects of ‘Locally Grown’ on Consumers’Attitudes towards Agri-Food Products