*4.2. Psycho-Attitudinal Scales*

Attitudes have been shown to have a grea<sup>t</sup> effect during the consumers' decision-making process, and for this reason, they were used in the present study to explain consumers' food choices, through appropriate attitudinal scales [51]. In particular, the GHI scale was chosen because it is expected to correlate positively with attitudes towards enriched foods [48]; the NPI scale is hypothesized to have a positive correlation with natural product consumption [48], while the RFF is expected to have a positive correlation with the consumer's willingness to feed himself/herself with enriched foods in order to improve or maintain a state of health [52,53]. Furthermore, for those items with negative meaning, Likert scale scores were reversed to improve the attitude scales' readability.

The Cronbach's alpha value was 0.85 for natural product interest, 0.83 for general health interest and 0.89 for reward from using functional food, indicating a good internal reliability (Table 2).


**Table 2.** Internal reliability of the scales.

The results show a high awareness of consumers about the health consequences of their food choices. Indeed, the higher GHI item scores were: "The healthiness of food has little impact on my food choices" (reversed mean = 5.00) and "I am very careful about the healthiness of food I eat" (mean = 4.51). Concerning NPI, the items with the highest scores were: "Foods containing artificial flavor enhancers are not harmful to health" (reversed mean = 5.98) and "Organically grown vegetables are no healthier than others" (reversed mean = 6.10). The items with the highest values for RFF were: "I ge<sup>t</sup> pleasure from eating functional foods" (mean = 5.77) and "The idea that I can take care of my health by eating functional foods gives me pleasure" (mean = 6.01).

Finally, correlation coefficients were computed and the presence of a positive and statistically significant correlation was found among all the three scales (Table 3).


**Table 3.** Correlation coefficients of the scales.

The descriptive statistics of individual items composing the three scales are shown in Tables 4–6.


**Table 4.** Items' statistics of general health interest (GHI) scale.


**Table 5.** Items' statistics of natural product interest (NPI) scale.

**Table 6.** Items' statistics of reward from using functional food (RFF) scale.


### *4.3. Willingness to Pay (WTP)*

Consumer bids describe how much participants are willing to pay for conventional, natural and enriched fruit juice. The estimated average WTPs were the following: 646.76 HUF (about €1.93) for the conventional fruit juice, 794.09 HUF (about €2.37) for the enriched fruit juice, and 957.93 (about €2.86) for the natural fruit juice (Table 7).


**Table 7.** Consumers' willingness to pay.

By means of a t-test and Wilcoxon test, it was possible to verify that there are statistically significant differences between the two attributes and that the natural attribute was preferred to the enriched attribute. Indeed, Δ*WTPNAT*, that is the differential value between the natural fruit juice and the conventional one, has an average value of 311.17 HUF (about 0.93€), while Δ*WTPENR*, which is the

di fferential value between the enriched fruit juice and the conventional one, has an average value of 147.32 HUF (about €0.44) (Table 7).

### *4.4. Drivers Behind Consumers' WTP for Both Attribute*

It is clear that consumer choice depends on many factors [48]. By performing a SUR between the two WTP for natural and enriched fruit juices and the other variables collected through the questionnaire, such as the consumer characteristics and psycho-attitudinal scales, it was possible to understand which are the drivers a ffecting consumer WTP for the two attributes. In Table 8 drivers behind consumers' WTP for both enriched and natural attributes, and the estimated coe fficients as well as their statistical significance, are shown.


**Table 8.** Drivers behind consumers' willingness to pay.

Breusch-Pagan test of independence: chi2(1) = 63.129, Pr = 0.0000.

For the section on consumers' WTP for vitamin-enriched fruit juice as a dependent variable, the results showed that the participants' preference is mainly a ffected by participants' attitude towards healthy eating (through their importance attributed to the items of the general interest scale for health (GHI)), towards the reward from using enriched foods (RFF) and consumers' monthly net income. Looking at this in more detail, RFF attitude and the monthly net income are positively correlated with the dependent variable; therefore, as the value of these independent variables increases, the average of the WTP for the enriched fruit juice tends to increase. On the contrary, the negative coe fficient of GHI attitude suggests that as they increase, the dependent variable tends to decrease. This means that the attitude towards healthy eating negatively a ffects the preference for the enriched fruit juice. This research is in line with other studies that describe the choice for the two attributes to improve or maintain a state of health [14,54,55].

Relatively to the consumers' WTP for the natural fruit juice, the results show that, contrary to what was showed by Caracciolo and colleagues' study, the preference for natural fruit juice is not explained by the NPI attitude. According to the results, the WTP values for natural fruit juice seem to be also a ffected by RFF attitudes, which in this case is related to the rewards from using natural fruit juice rich in vitamins. This suggests the interest for both attributes (enriched and natural) seems to be a ffected by common drivers, that is, rewards from using fruit juices richer in vitamins compared to the conventional one. Di fferences in results, compared to other research findings, may depend on consumers familiarity with the product [1], suggesting, in line with Urala and Lähteenmäki's study [15], that e ffects on consumer choice have to be studied not as one homogenous group of product, but rather as separate products within the various food categories. Furthermore, monthly net income positively affects consumers' WTP for both products. This is in line with Bruchi and colleagues' study [50]

showing how as the level of monthly net income increases, the WTP for natural and enriched fruit juice increases.
