Consumer Demand for Fair Trade: Evidence from a Multistore Field Experiment
the best field evidence in the file because the outcome is money changing hands in real shops. The authors report, from experiments in a U.S. grocery store chain, that sales of the two most popular coffees rose by almost 10% when they carried a Fair Trade label rather than a generic placebo label. Demand for the higher-priced coffee held steady when its price rose 8%, while demand for the lower-priced coffee was elastic: a 9% price increase cut sales by 30%. Consumers value ethical sourcing, but willingness to pay for it varies widely. Read the three figures together
the best field evidence in the file because the outcome is money changing hands in real shops. The authors report, from experiments in a U.S. grocery store chain, that sales of the two most popular coffees rose by almost 10% when they carried a Fair Trade label rather than a generic placebo label. Demand for the higher-priced coffee held steady when its price rose 8%, while demand for the lower-priced coffee was elastic: a 9% price increase cut sales by 30%. Consumers value ethical sourcing, but willingness to pay for it varies widely. Read the three figures together
Written from the abstract read 2026-10-18.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Hainmueller, J., Hiscox, M. J., & Sequeira, S. (2015). Consumer Demand for Fair Trade: Evidence from a Multistore Field Experiment. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 97(2), 242-256. doi:10.1162/rest_a_00467.