The Role of the Beneficiary in Willingness to Pay for Socially Responsible Products: A Meta-analysis

Many companies have made significant investments in socially responsible production practices for their products. Environmentally safe cleaning roducts, fair trade coffee, and sustainable seafood are just a few examples. In this paper, we conduct a meta-analysis of over 80 published and npublished research papers across a large number of product categories to better understand differences in willingness to pay (WTP) for socially esponsible products. In particular, we are interested in whether the beneficiary of the social responsibility program—humans, animals, or the nvironment—affects WTP. We use two dependent variables: the percentage premium people are willing to pay and the proportion of respondents ho are willing to pay a positive premium. We find that the mean percentage premium is 16.8 percent and that, on average, 60 percent of respondents re willing to pay a positive premium. Importantly, across both dependent measures, we find that WTP is greater for products where the socially esponsible element benefits humans (e.g., labor practices) compared to those that benefit the environment. Implications for retailers, manufacturers, nd future research are discussed. 2014 New York University. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.