Consumers’ Preferences and Willingness to Pay for Honey Quality Attributes in Nyandarua County, Kenya

Honey adulteration and limited consumer knowledge are some of the major challenges facing the honey sector. Despite the interventions of planting bee flora to ensure honey quality, limited empirical information exists on consumers’ preferences for honey quality features. This study assessed consumers’ preferences for honey quality attributes and estimated willingness to pay for these attributes in Nyandarua County, Kenya. Further, inclusion of bee floral source label as a quality attribute is a useful contribution to empirical literature. Random Parameter Logit model was used to analyze choice experiment data from 252 honey consumers. The empirical results showed that consumers had a positive preference for bee flora source label, origin labelling, joint certification, continuous viscosity and dark brown color of honey. Preference heterogeneity across various attributes was observed. Consumers were willing to pay the highest premium for honey viscosity. The results of this study will help in developing market positioning strategies for honey as well as policies to promote consumption of honey of high quality.