Nutritional Knowledge and Health Consciousness: Do They Affect Consumer Wine Choices? Evidence from a Survey in Italy

Abstract

Wine is one of the few food products not subject to mandatory nutritional labelling, except for alcohol content. As such, health-related characteristics might be inferred by attributes related to production methods and alcohol content. This research focuses on the set of information currently reported on wine bottle labels, investigates the consumer’s use of such labels, and their preferences for information associated with ’naturalness’ such as clean labels and alcohol content. We conducted a survey on Italian consumers of red wine, which included a choice experiment. Results showed that health consciousness is an important driver in the use of wine labels. Estimates from a latent class model suggest that health consciousness, along with age, plays a significant role in defining consumer preference segments: the majority of our sample tended to prefer red wine characterized by ‘clean labels’, but younger and more health-conscious consumers showed a significant disutility for higher alcohol content. More traditional consumers revealed disutility for more unconventional ‘clean labels’, which were instead appreciated by a third group of consumers, called here ‘new clean trend lovers’. Preference for nutritional information such as lower alcohol content and clean labels distinguished the more health-conscious consumers, who belonged to the most likely preference class. Together, the results may suggest that nutritional information currently not mandatory for wine would be appreciated by a significant share of wine consumers.