Relevance of Apple Quality Traits for Consumers

Since breeders face a long list of quality traits to focus on in their breeding programs, information on how consumers value these may help breeders better establish trait priorities and make the breeding process more efficient. This study investigates the marginal values consumers place on apple quality traits, including internal and external quality traits. This is part of a larger SCRI project that aims to increase the long-term economic sustainability of Rosacea crops by increasing the U.S. per-capita consumption of fruits. We conducted a second-price auction along with a sensory tasting of apples with consumers in November 2012. The studies took place in Pullman, WA; St. Paul, MN; and Portland, OR. Three censored Tobit models are used to analyze the data where the bid is the dependent variable.  External quality traits evaluated by consumers, internal quality traits instrumentally measured, and both sets of quality traits were used as regressors in the first, second, and third model respectively. All three models include demographic and purchase habits variables as regressors. Our goal is to find what group of attributes consumers value more, explicitly, external or internal quality traits, but also to estimate the marginal values consumers place on each apple quality trait.