WILLINGNESS-TO-PAY FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY CERTIFIED WOOD PRODUCTS - A CONSUMER PERSPECTIVE

A study was conducted in the spring of 1995 to: 1) determine the willi ngness of U.S. consumers to pay a price premium for environmentally ce rtified wood products over a range of consumer products; 2) determine the size of the consumer segments for these products; and 3) profile t hese segments. Frequencies and mean responses were used to analyze the willingness to pay data. A cluster analysis performed on nine measure s of wood products certification suggests the existence of five relati vely homogeneous segments of consumers. Results indicated that consume r willingness to incur a price premium for certified wood products var ied depending on the item considered, with a range from 4.4 to 18.7 pe rcent. However, an average of 37 percent of consumers, across the rang e of products considered, were not willing to incur a premium for any type of environmentally certified wood product. This paper identifies one consumer segment of approximately 16.5 million Americans who would most likely seek out and buy environmentally certified wood products at a price premium. They can be described, relative to other study res pondents, as politically liberal, a member of both the Democratic Part y and an environmental organization, and most likely female.