Understanding how consumers and producers evaluate tradeoffs related to food and agriculture using experimental auctions

Experimental auctions are increasingly used to estimate consumer demand for non-market goods and intangible characteristics of goods. The main advantage of experimental auctions over other value elicitation methods is that they are non- hypothetical and flexible. Experimental auctions are binding in the sense that subjects exchange real money for real goods, yet they allow researchers to collect detailed information about subjects, present subjects with information treatments, and observe changes in bidding behavior. By pushing experimental auctions further into field settings we can enrich the context of the research and be able to explore more complex tradeoffs consumers are required to make. The following research uses experimental auctions to explore tradeoffs in two very different contexts: subsistence farmers' tradeoffs between the consumption and production attributes of a new staple crop variety, and consumer tradeoffs between the health safety and product quality of artisan food products.;In the first paper, experimental auctions were used to explore farmers' perceptions of the tradeoffs between biofortification and yield of new common bean varieties (Phaseolus vulgaris) in Rwanda. Biofortification of staple crops such as common bean in Rwanda has the potential to improve nutrition outcomes among subsistence farmers, although farmers are often slow to adopt new varieties. Experimental auctions were conducted with 80 farmers who participated in on-farm agronomic trials of common bean varieties in traditional intercrop systems and in monocrop and 180 farmers from the same regions who were only shown the nutrient and yield content information. The main conclusion is that on-farm participatory crop research is essential to understanding how farmers evaluate tradeoffs since experimentation provides them with full information about the new varieties. Farmer WTP for new varieties is largely based on how varieties perform in traditional intercrop systems rather than the monocrop, which is required by new agricultural policy in Rwanda. Another important finding was that non-binding preference elicitation methods can mischaracterize farmers' preferences depending on the context so binding methods may have a role in future participatory crop research.;The second and third papers explore how individuals make choices involving tradeoffs between health risk and product quality in the market for artisan cheese in the United States. In cheesemaking, pasteurization of milk can eradicate pathogenic bacteria that cause illness as well as beneficial bacteria that contribute to ripening and flavor development in aged cheese. This issue is at the center of an ongoing debate over the regulation of unpasteurized cheese with welfare implications for both producers and consumers. Experimental auctions were conducted with 347 artisan cheese consumers to understand their attitudes towards pasteurization and aging unpasteurized cheese and their response to scientific information surrounding this food safety debate. After accounting for taste preferences, underlying demographics, and attitudes about food safety only a very small portion of consumers were willing to pay more for pasteurized cheese. Consumers weighted their taste preferences more heavily than whether or not the cheese was pasteurized and their decisions about whether to purchase pasteurized cheese were largely ideologically driven. Participants that were more likely to choose pasteurized cheese were more responsive to information regardless of the nature of the information.