Consumers' purchasing behaviour under risk and uncertainty: three essays on food authenticity

Specifically, the role of subjective beliefs, risk and ambiguity attitudes, and information. I focus on food purchasing decisions with uncertainty about the quality generated by food fraud.<br><br>The first essay uses an artefactual field experiment to explore bidding behaviour under risk and uncertainty in homegrown value (HGV) and induced value (IV) settings using Becker-DeGroot-Marschak mechanism (BDM) and second price Vickrey auctions (SPVA).

It investigates if deviations from theoretical predications can be ascribed to bidding behaviour that is inconsistent with standard theories of decision making (i.e. Expected Utility Theory and Subjective Expected Utility Theory). In the HGV setting, non-monetary lotteries are used. Participants bid for a high-quality seafood product, but there is a chance (known or unknown) they receive a lower quality seafood product. <br><br>The second essay uses the artefactual field experiment to explore consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) a price premium to avoid food fraud.