Distinguishing beliefs from preferences in food choice

In the past two decades, there has been an explosion of studies eliciting consumer willingness-to-pay for food attributes; however, this work has largely refrained from drawing a distinction between preferences for health, safety and quality on the one hand and consumers' subjective beliefs that the products studied possess these attributes, on the other. Using data from three experimental studies, along with structural economic models, we show that controlling for subjective beliefs can substantively alter the interpretation of results and the ultimate implications derived from a study. The results suggest the need to measure subjective beliefs in studies of consumer choice and to utilise the measures when making policy and marketing recommendations.