Evaluating consumers' willingness to buy environmentally friendly wines: A store experiment

poster + communication courte confidentielsThe French program Ecophyto 2018 aims at achieving a 50% reduction in pesticide use by 2018. The vine-growing sector being the second largest user of pesticides in France, there is a strong need for French vine-growers to engage in more environmentally sustainable practices. However, they will do so if they are sure that consumers are ready to buy environmentally friendly wines. Thus, the two main objectives of this study were to identify consumers' willingness to buy environmentally friendly wines and to estimate the impact of an information campaign. 220 wine consumers participated in the study. Each consumer came twice, at a 3-week interval, in an experimental store to buy one bottle of wine. Consumers were presented with 11 wines varying according three price levels corresponding to the market price range (4.50, 7.40 and 11.30€) and 4 types of practices (conventional, integrated, organic, biodynamic agriculture). The chosen wine was recorded for each consumer at each session. After the 1st session, consumers were split into two groups: Non-Informed and Informed. The Informed group received at home a brochure containing information about sustainable practices and associated logos. At the end of the 2nd session consumers filled in a questionnaire. Consumers appeared not well informed about the different environmentally sustainable practices for wines, in particular about “biodynamic” wines (74% unknown), and to a lesser extent about integrated production (56% unknown). Nevertheless, consumers are willing to buy environmentally friendly wines if they are sold at the same price than the conventional wines. By comparing the consumers' choices between the two sessions according to be informed or not, we found that the information on wine production methods has a slight effect, but it seems that the information had a negative impact on conventional products rather than a real positive impact on the environmentally friendly products. Acknowledgements This study is part of VINPEST - "An experimental investigation of the willingness to produce environmentally friendly wine", an Integrated Project financed by the Ministry of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Energy (MEDDE). This study was also funded by the Regional Council of Burgundy. The authors thank Embrapa (Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation) Labex Europe for the financial support. Lucia H.E.S. Laboissière acknowledges CNPq (Brazilian Council for Scientific and Technological Development)/Labex for her postdoctoral fellowshi

Identifying motives underlying wine purchase decisions: Results from an exploratory free listing task with Burgundy wine consumers

To better understand consumer decision making processes while purchasing wine it is important to identify which attributes consumers actually rely on and how they perceive and weight them in order to reach a final decision. The aims of the present work were to identify motives underlying wine purchase decisions and to identify consumer segments with different drivers of wine purchase. One hundred and twenty seven Burgundy wine consumers were asked to complete a free listing task. Relevance of each category of elicited terms was estimated by Smith's and Cognitive saliency indices. Hierarchical cluster analysis was performed on individual Smith's saliency indices. In the free listing task, respondents listed an average of 5.6 terms, the minimum number per participant being 2 and the maximum 11. The four categories with the highest saliency indices were Price, Production region, Wine type and Production year. Two consumer segments with different motives underlying their wine purchase decisions were identified. Cluster 1, mainly composed of young consumers, elicited Price, Production region, Food and wine pairing and Consumption context as the most salient motives, while Cluster 2, composed of older consumers, mentioned Production region, Price, Grape variety and Wine type as the most salient ones

Logos indicating environmental sustainability in wine production: An exploratory study on how do Burgundy wine consumers perceive them

Logos on environmental sustainability could consist of an effective strategy to provide consumers with accurate, understandable and trustworthy information to encourage them to buy environmentally sustainable wines. However, the large number of different logos indicating environmental sustainability available in the market raises the question of whether their associated messages are successfully conveyed to consumers. In this context, the aim of the present exploratory study was to investigate how Burgundy wine consumers perceive a series of logos indicating environmental sustainability in wine production. Fourteen logos available in the French market were selected: three logos being specific to wine and eleven non-specific. The logos were presented to 127 wine consumers from Dijon area (France), following an incomplete balanced block design. For each logo, participants had to answer the question: “What does a bottle of wine with this logo suggest to you?”. Responses were qualitatively analyzed and grouped into different categories. Chi-square tests and Correspondence analysis were used to identify the relationship among logos and categories. Results showed large differences in how consumers perceived the logos. Biodyvin, the former European AB and the French AB organic logos were the logos that most successfully conveyed their messages, being strongly associated to organic wine. Most logos did not communicate a message related to environmental sustainability, which reaffirms the need to provide consumers with adequate information on environmental sustainability and to conduct further research on this subject

Une évaluation expérimentale des consentements à la réduction de l'utilisation des pesticides dans le vin

Le projet VINPEST repose sur l’hypothèse que la performance d’une exploitation viticole peut être envisagée sous d’autres angles que celui du rendement de la vigne, mais cela passe par des incitations ciblées pour les producteurs et les consommateurs de vin : en particulier, une vigne performante est aussi une vigne qui a une performance environnementale. Se pose alors la question de la manière dont ces incitations fonctionnent, par qui et comment devraient-elles être mises en oeuvre

Properties of a disease-specific prion probe

In a recently published article, Paramithiotis et al. describe antibodies specific for the prion Tyr-Tyr-Arg (YYR) repeat motif. These antibodies interact with the pathological isoform of the prion protein (PrPSC), but not with the normal cellular isoform (PrpC). Because of this restricted specificity, they suggest that YYR-specific antibodies could be useful for the diagnosis and treatment of prion diseases (Fig. O. The monoclonal antibodies, all of the IgM isotype, were produced by immunizing mice with a synthetic peptide (CYYRRYYRYY). When coupled to magnetic beads, these YYR-specific antibodies immunoprecipitate Prpsc much more efficiently than PrpC. Notably, the Paramithiotis study did not rely on antibodies to YYR for specific detection of PrP. Their immunoblots were not ultimately probed with Prpsc-specific antibodies, but rather with \u27regular\u27 antibodies. The latter can detect PrP (but do not distinguish between Prpsc and PrpC) in a precipitate that could include any protein containing solvent-accessible tyrosine and arginine residues. This report is notably similar to that of Korth et al. 2, who described a Prpsc-specific IgM (designated 15B3) after immunizing with full-length recombinant bovine PrP. The 15B3 epitope consists of three separate, linear segments of PrP (15B3-1, 15B3-2 and 15B3-3). The YYR epitope (bold) identified by Paramithiotis et al. is included in or located near two of the 15B3 segments (underlined): GSDYEDRYYR (l5B3-1) and YYRPVDOYS (l5B3-2). Thus, these two independent studies relying on the same method of immunoprecipitation have identified similar IgM antibodies interacting with the same region on PrP, and possibly with the same YYR motifs

A prion protein epitope selective for the pathologically misfolded conformation

Conformational conversion of proteins in disease is likely to be accompanied by molecular surface exposure of previously sequestered amino-acid side chains. We found that induction of β-sheet structures in recombinant prion proteins is associated with increased solvent accessibility of tyrosine. Antibodies directed against the prion protein repeat motif, tyrosine-tyrosinearginine, recognize the pathological isoform of the prion protein but not the normal cellular isoform, as assessed by immunoprecipitation, plate capture immunoassay and flow cytometry. Antibody binding to the pathological epitope is saturable and specific, and can be created in vitro by partial denaturation of normal brain prion protein. Conformation-selective exposure of Tyr-Tyr-Arg provides a probe for the distribution and structure of pathologically misfolded prion protein, and may lead to new diagnostics and therapeutics for prion diseases