108 | 2017 Field Days Bulletin | SAREC Long Reports Willingness to Pay and Information Demand for Locally Produced Honey Linda Thunström 1 , Chian Jones Ritten 2 , Mariah Ehmke 2 , Jenny Beiermann 2 , and Cole Ehmke 2 Introduction The market for honey is changing rapidly. One important factor afecting the market is the recent die-of of domestic honey bees at dramatic rates, leading to drastic decreases in domestic honey production. The honey market, therefore, increasingly relies on foreign honey to satisfy demand (Ward and Boynton, 2010). Foreign honey, however, runs the risk of containing traces of pesticides and heavy metals; therefore, they may pose risks to consumer health (Ezenwa, 2009; Wei Guo-xue et al., 2012). Objectives This project aims at analyzing how consumers evaluate health risks of consuming international honey and how these risks infuence consumer willingness to pay for honey produced in Wyoming. Our focus is on Wyoming consumers. Specifcally, our objectives are to answer the following: (1) are consumers willing to pay a premium for Wyoming honey?; (2) how is consumer willingness-to-pay for Wyoming honey impacted by food safety information about Wyoming honey?; (3) do consumers feel guilty about consuming non-local honey?; (4) will consumers avoid information about the origin of honey to avoid feelings of guilt? Materials and Methods The studies were conducted using economic experiments at (1) the James C. Hageman Sustainable Agriculture Research and Extension Center (SAREC) near Lingle during spring 2015; (2) Eastern Wyoming College in Torrington during spring 2015; and (3) the University of Wyoming in Laramie during fall 2015 and spring 2016. The experiments were designed to extract consumers’ true willingness-to-pay for Wyoming honey, versus honey of unknown origin, as well as determinants of honey demand. In the frst round of experiments (in 2015), 449 people from the general public participated, while another 516 subjects participated in the second round of experiments (spring 2016). Subjects were divided into diferent treatment groups, which enabled measures of how consumer demand for local honey is afected by diferent types of information, as well as by their willingness to inform themselves about the food safety attributes of local honey. Further, diferent methods were used to extract the willingness-to-pay (or demand) for Wyoming honey, compared to honey of unknown origin. In the frst round of experiments, participants were faced with a fxed-price premium for Wyoming honey (and stated if they wanted to buy Wyoming honey at that premium, under diferent information regimes), while in the second round of experiments, participants got to state their own individual, willingness-to-pay for Wyoming honey. The latter enabled us to examine the variation in willingness-to-pay for Wyoming honey over diferent consumer types. Results and Discussion In general, we found that consumers are highly concerned about their honey being locally produced. In one study, we found that the average premium Wyoming consumers are willing to pay for Wyoming honey—over honey of unknown origin—is $2.08 per eight ounces of honey. In another study, we presented participants with a fxed premium of $2.48 for an eight-ounce jar of honey produced in Wyoming, compared to honey of unknown origin. We found that a majority of consumers (53%) were willing to pay the premium. In a third study, we found that providing consumers with information on the food safety benefts of locally produced honey signifcantly increased the percentage of consumers willing to pay the $2.48 premium for Wyoming honey.