The budgetary implications of being an organic consumer

It has repeatedly been shown that consumers consider the higher price of organic produce to be a barrier to buying organic food products. The present paper therefore asks whether organic consumption affects consumers’ actual total food expenditures. Food purchase data for a panel of Danish households during 2006–2014 were used to compare the total food expenditures of different organic household segments. A fixed effects model and a cross-section model both indicated that although food expenditures rose slightly with organic consumption, the increase was considerably less than had been suggested by organic price premiums at product level.