Determinants of Purchasing Sustainably Produced Wines by Italian Wine Consumers

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The paper aims to highlight the determinants that influence Italian wine consumers' willingness to purchase sustainably produced wine. The authors collected data from 522 consumers and employed a multivariate logistic regression to examine whether the desire to pay a premium for sustainably produced wines differs significantly based on past environmental-related purchasing behaviour and socio-demographic characteristics. The authors point out that there are determinant factors that direct the wine choices of Italian consumers, such as: (a)Wine knowledge, (b), Age, (c) Previously bought sustainably produced goods, (d) Bought sustainably produced wine, (e) The price of wine. The paper is well-structured and informative but requires some revisions before being published in Sustainability.

1. The paper has extended similarities with DOI:10.1108/IJWBR-04-2021-0024. The authors should work more on it and eliminate these similarities.
2. The paper needs a thorough literature review section to discuss papers linked with sustainable consumption patterns critically.
3. Sustainable wine production is intricately linked with sustainable development, a concept that encompasses environmental sustainability and social responsibility. The authors have included a brief discussion on sustainable development to enlighten the readers about its significance in the context of sustainable wine consumption. Furthermore, the inclusion of references to recent works on sustainable development, such as 'Broad strokes towards a grand theory in the analysis of sustainable development: a return to the classical political economy' New Political Economy, 27(5), pp. 866-878 and 'History, Knowledge, and Sustainable Economic Development: The Contribution of John Stuart Mill’s Grand Stage Theory', Sustainability, 13 (3) serves to inform further and engage the readers.
4. Do the authors believe that sustainably produced wine could eliminate regional inequalities between Italian North and South?
5. What are the policy implications of the paper? For instance, sustainable wine is associated with SDG 12 (Ensure sustainable consumption and production). What are the implications of strengthening this association?
6. Limitations should be included in a separate section.
7. Minor: Where is the Figure 1?

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Reviewer Report sustainability-313872

General comments

The paper under review examines an interesting topic, i.e., the determinants of Italian consumers’ willingness to pay for sustainably produced wine. However, the empirics are largely problematic. The study applies a very traditional contingent valuation (CV) method to elicit Italian consumers' willingness to pay for sustainably produced wines, but the design suffers from a large number of methodological flaws, as I outline below.

 

1.The sample was collected through an online survey, which seriously undermines the representativeness of the sample. Yes, the authors show a map of the IP distribution of sample respondents, but the fact that these people were willing to participate in a wine survey implies that they might be willing to pay more for (sustainably produced) wine. As such, their WTP is likely to be overestimated.

 

2. The authors chose a very conventional CV method to elicit consumers' WTP, one that was used in the 1990s. However, over the years, many new methodological breakthroughs have been made in the literature. For example, the doubled-bounded design to improve precision, the cheap-talk script used to improve the validity of responses, and discrete choice-experimental designs that can be used to examined the role of product attributes, have all been ignored. I would suggest the authors try a discrete choice experiment to discover more granular patterns of consumer WTP.

 

3. If your products are already on the market, you should use an observational approach, rather than a CV approach. This is because CV would be meaningless if the consumers can buy the focal product easily (and you can see this behavior). I am sure if this is your case, but the authors shall explain clearly whether this is the case.

 

4. The authors could have designed some treatments (e.g., scientific information about the product, government policy, or new designs of labels) to discover more interesting patterns.

 

5. It’s odd that the authors use a logit model rather than a probit model to estimate WTP. One usually computes the WTP as a dollar value, but this paper computes it as an odds ratio, which is hard to interpret. Please consult the text by Haab & McConnell (2002) to see how the standard econometric model in this field should be set up.

 

Reference

Haab & McConnell (2002) Valuing Environmental and Natural Resources: The Econometrics of Non-market Valuation. Elgar. 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

The English is fine.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Very enjoyable paper. Interesting results, Consumers who are older are less likely to buy them than younger purchasers. Not surprising given younger attitudes toward eco-friendly issues and willingness to try new things. Those who have bought sustainably-produced wines in the past are less likely to buy them again in the future. Poor experiences or decisions that they have not gotten what they thought they were paying for? Overall very good.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Very minor issues. Some editing needed for missing words or awkward phrases. Very few instances, but noticeable to a native English speaker.

Author Response

Comments:

Very enjoyable paper. Interesting results, Consumers who are older are less likely to buy them than younger purchasers. Not surprising given younger attitudes toward eco-friendly issues and willingness to try new things. Those who have bought sustainably-produced wines in the past are less likely to buy them again in the future. Poor experiences or decisions that they have not gotten what they thought they were paying for? Overall very good.

 

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Very minor issues. Some editing needed for missing words or awkward phrases. Very few instances, but noticeable to a native English speaker.

 

Response:

Thank you for your endorsement of the content of the manuscript.

The manuscript has been edited for clarity with sentences reconstructed, missing words added and grammar corrected.

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

 

The authors addressed my previous comments and improved their manuscript.

Comments on the Quality of English Language

Minor editing of the English language is required.

Author Response

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The authors addressed my previous comments and improved their manuscript.

Comments on the Quality of English Language Minor editing of the English language is required.   Response Thank you for your endorsement of our manuscript. We have edited the whole of the manuscript for clarity and grammar.