Fruit and Vegetable Quality

clude the use and nonuse value justifying empirical CV studies. Con-
sumer preference for fruit color is an illustration of enjoyment derived
from an external attribute, which may be unrelated to other physical
characteristics or intrinsic attributes relevant to eating. The past use of
alar in American apple orchards to enhance fruit color is an example of
growers’ response to consumer color preferences rather than an attempt
to influence eating quality. Misra et al. (1991) showed that consumers
preferred pesticide-free produce, but had little tolerance for visible de-
fects. Whereas visible quality defects are noticed by consumers, appli-
cations of pesticides are perceived to be safe and necessary to produce
crop.
Empirical applications of the CV technique are based on the neo-
classical theory of utility maximizing consumer. Although the theoreti-
cal framework is similar to that applied by Hedonic pricing technique,
the lack of actual market prices reflecting the demand for nontraded
goods places a particular burden on the researcher to clearly define the
relationship between the price of an attribute of a nontraded commod-
ity and explanatory variables. The CV approach assumes that consumers’
choices reflecting utility, or satisfaction derived from the consumption
of produce, are bounded only by exogenously determined income and
the market prices of all goods. The marginal utility of each quality at-
tribute is derived from the utility maximizing equation and the income
constraint. Moreover, the marginal utility obtained from consumption of
each additional unit of attribute is positive, but decreasing. For exam-
ple, within the same meal each eaten strawberry satisfies the consumer,
but the satisfaction from eating the first strawberry is higher than from
all berries eaten afterwards.
The concept of utility imposes strong limitations on the economic
analysis and recommendations from empirical CV investigations. The-
oretically, consumers are assumed to be able to recognize the choice
maximizing their utility, to order all choices according to the level of
utility they provide, and to assess the additional amount of utility gained
or lost by choosing among available alternatives. The abstract nature of
utility permits only its indirect measurement. Typically, empirical stud-
ies assume that the decision to purchase or to abstain from a purchase
mirrors the utility derived from the product. The decision is irreversible
and maximizes the satisfaction of a rational consumer.
The CV technique is useful in researching the quality of fresh pro-
duce and buyers’ behavior because it allows quantification of attribute
effects on purchase decision probability before a product with a specific

236 ECONOMICS OF QUALITY