Demand for Organic and Conventional Fruits

We examine consumer demand for organic and conventional fruits by estimating a censored demand system, using Nielsen's Homescan data. Sociodemographic characteristics and income are found to be significant factors of organic fruit consumption. Consumers are responsive to own-price changes in selected organic fruits, while the own-price elasticities for conventional fruits are much smaller. Asymmetric cross-price effects are found between organic and conventional fruits, suggesting that a change in relative prices will more likely cause consumers of conventional fruits to "cross-over" to organic fruits, while the reverse is less likely to happen such that organic consumers will "revert" to conventional fruits