Jose Maria Gil

• Polytechnic University of Catalonia

This paper explored the resilience of the agri-food supply chain in the context of the COVID-19 disruption and identifies practical lessons to improve the organizational response and recovery of firms after the unprecedented crisis. Structural equation modelling was employed to examine organizational resilience of Catalan agri-food supply chain bas...

Price promotion is the marketing tool typically used by retail brands to boost sales and gain market share. In this paper, we intend to investigate the price transmission mechanism among competitive brands in Spain when price reductions that are associated with price promotions take place. The study is focused on intra-retailer competition in two r...

Overweight and obesity are considered the greatest public health problem in this emerging country, which worldwide has the second-highest percentage of overweight people among its population. The objective of this work was to analyse to what extent factors traditionally used in the study of overweight and obesity (such as sociodemographic and behav...

Agricultural price forecasting plays an important role in stabilising markets and ensuring food security. It provides insights for various stakeholders to optimise planting choices, allocate resources efficiently and mitigate potential risks. However, price forecasting during food safety incidents poses unique challenges. This study focused on a ca...

Background/Objectives: Populations in Mediterranean countries are abandoning the traditional Mediterranean diet (MD) and lifestyle, shifting towards unhealthier habits due to profound cultural and socioeconomic changes. The SWITCHtoHEALTHY project aims to demonstrate the effectiveness of a multi-component nutritional intervention to improve the adh...

Since agriculture is responsible for a considerable share of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE), this paper examines the impact of various carbon taxes designed to incentivize environmentally friendly food consumption patterns in four European countries: Finland, Italy, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. As the proposed fiscal policies are...

Rice is a basic component in the diet of more than half of the world's population, with 95% of its production destined for human consumption. Spain is the second rice producer in the European Union (EU), geographically located in four autonomous communities contributing to the local economy. This study aims at assessing the productive efficiency of...

The aim of this experiment was to provide makers of cut packaged salads with useful information and to help them develop suitable marketing strategies. Consumer preferences and willingness to pay for clean and cut packaged salads (baby leaves) were investigated. The focus was on the impact of more sustainable packaging on consumer preferences and w...

Innovations in the agri-food industry targeting the strengthening of sustainability have recently increased their emphasis on compliance with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In the H2020 CO-FRESH project, seven sustainable innovations have been implemented by seven local farms and companies in six EU Member States using diversified format...

Retailers have been using promotion as a differentiation strategy that influences consumers’ expenditures and their shopping basket budgetary allocation. This study assessed the effect of retail promotions on total shopping basket expenditure and determined whether promotions provoke a reallocation of the shopping budget. The analysis was performed...

In this paper, we assess the role of emotions in choices. We elicited emotions using an innovative facial expression analysis approach, comparing the results to those from a traditional hedonic liking scale. To this end, we conduct an experiment combing surveys and actual wine tasting. The results show a positive and significant relationship betwee...

Adopting genome editing with the trait of pest resistance contributes to sustainable development by reducing pesticide use. Developed by Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR) technology, CRISPR rice is resistant to two of its most destructive insect pests. However, there exists a trade-off between pest resistance and lo...

Aleppo Pine forests provide several ecosystem services for the local population as well as for the society in Tunisia. Knowing the citizens’ preferences is crucial to guide forest management strategies. This study aims to determine the social demand for key benefits provided by forests using the choice experiment modelling. Results show a high soci...

This study estimates and analyze the technical efficiency of pork farms from five EU countries. The Generalized True Random-effects (GTRE) model was used to differentiate between persistent and transitory technical efficiency. The results show that elasticities are robust to various specifications. Spanish farms show the highest average efficiency...

Mountain food production contributes to the support of local economies and cultures and it provides quality food products due to the characteristics of the raw materials combined with traditional processing conditions. Consumers perceive those products as environmentally friendly and of high quality. To support this production, the European Union h...

There has been limited research on the degree to which rational inefficiency arises when environmental factors are considered. Thus, our goal is to contribute to the literature by applying the concept of rational inefficiency to pig farming and investigating the relationship between water use and farm technical efficiency levels. This research aims...

Using a two-regime threshold vector autoregressive model, this study investigates the nonlinear price transmission among tuna, salmon and hake during a food safety incident. The tuna fraud in Spain caused a histamine outbreak in 2017, which made 105 people fall ill. To evaluate the degree to which the food safety incident affected price transmissio...

The health and environmental concerns of consumers increased their interest in organic wines. We conducted a fifth-price multi-product auction (simultaneous) among 300 regular red wine drinkers in Barcelona (Spain) to assess consumer’s preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for different typologies of red wine (conventional, organic and selected...

There is an increasing interest in the Water-Energy-Food-Ecosystems (WEFE) Nexus approach to mitigate the impact of climate change. Within this approach, four intercorrelated sectors must be managed holistically to achieve food, resource, and energy security. Numerous projects worldwide have been developed to promote Nexus solutions. However, conve...

Consumers concern for health and environment increases their demand for more sustainable (organic) wines. We conducted a nonhypothetical discrete choice experiment and a wine tasting among 200 white wine drinkers to assess consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay for wine with social and sustainable attributes. In particular, we test whether p...

The cereals, oilseeds and protein production is an important sector contributing to Sustainable Development Goals in Tunisia. COP farms often diversify their production patterns to stabilize their income sources and spread the production risk across crops. However, crop diversity may entail an inefficient use and management of resources to achieve...

This study aims to assess the impact of adopting innovation in livestock farming. A field survey was conducted during the season 2019-2020 and primary data was collected through a structured questionnaire from a total sample of 203 households. We used the propensity score matching analysis to examine the impact of the new feeding strategy. The logi...

Weighing cultural legacies is crucial to better understand the opportunity costs of lagoon restoration. It may be necessary for local populations whose well-being and culture are closely linked to heritage. This paper investigates the preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) of local fishermen for contributing to the restoration of the Bizerte lago...

This study examined the relationship between public research and development (R&D) investment and agricultural productivity growth in Chile during the 1964-2017 period. To achieve this objective, we used a combined approach based on accounting and econometric measures. The results indicated that agricultural productivity grew at an annual average r...

Recently, increasing numbers of consumers have embraced higher green consumption values and expressed environmental concern through their shopping behavior. These consumers are a promising target group for sustainable products. However, especially in the food sector, it is challenging for consumers to recognize these products because of a multitude...

The pig meat production plays a significant role in the Spanish agrofood system. The assessment of the efficiency performance with which farmers are operating is necessary to define adequate policy and management strategies. In this context, this study aimed to determine the technical efficiency (TE) performance of pig farms and to examine the key...

A multi-criteria decision-making system based on stakeholder evaluation is performed to investigate the nexus between research impact and sustainability performance in the agro-food sector, in Spain. This study attempts to go a step further beyond the scientific assessment of research by examining its societal contribution. The empirical applicatio...

Cereal, oilseed, and protein (COP) production is an important sector contributing to Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Tunisia. COP farms often diversify their production patterns to stabilize their income sources and spread production risk across crops. However, crop diversity may entail an inefficient use and management of resources to achi...

This study assesses the impact of COVID-19 on consumers’ preferences and attitudes toward local food products. To this end, a survey was conducted in Barcelona (Spain) among 240 consumers in Feb-ruary 2020 (Before the coronavirus lockdown) and among 600 consumers in November 2020. The sur-vey collected information on purchasing and con-sumption hab...

Performance-based funding and calls for public-funded science to demonstrate societal impact are encouraging public research organisations to evaluate impact, the so-called impact agenda. This paper explores evaluation methods of four fully or partially public-funded agricultural research organisations and how they are building evaluative capacity...

Pig farming plays an important role in the European agricultural economy. The relevance of this sector in Denmark, France, Spain and Poland as a leading EU pig producers makes the analysis especially interesting to assess the performance of pig farms in these countries. To do so, we estimate the persistent and transient efficiencies levels using a...

The present study aims at assessing the impact of the public agricultural research and development (R&D) on the total factor productivity in Catalonia. To do so, we use a complementary approach based on econometric and accounting techniques to examine the relationship between public investments in agricultural R&D and the productivity growth over t...

An unprecedented crisis has forced to impose lockdowns and to declare states of alarm in Spain. These restrictions have had an important impact on the normal activity of firms. This study aims at assessing the impact of COVID-19 crisis on the agro-food sector and determining the factors that could contribute to build the resilience of firms in the...

El Libro Blanco de la Alimentación Sostenible en España, realizado por la Fundación Alternativas y la Fundación Carasso, identifica y propone las principales claves para lograr una transición hacia sistemas alimentarios sostenibles y resilientes. Este objetivo se plasma en cada uno de los 13 capítulos temáticos que componen el volumen, a través de...

Food waste (FW) prevention is an essential measure to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal target 12.3, achieve more sustainable food systems and tackle the climate crisis. This paper aims at evaluating nudging strategies’ impact on FW prevention in school canteens. To do so, it applies a four-stage methodology in 4 sch...

Literature showed that emotions influence consumer’ behavior (Kamran and Siddiqui, 2019; Majeed et al., 2017; Sharma et al., 2021). The present study compared the impact of rational and emotional messages on consumer sensory evaluation, buying intention and willingness to pay for local products (cheese and hazelnuts) with protected designation of o...

To identify whether EU certified food – here organic and geographical indications – is more sustainable than a conventional reference, we developed 25 indicators covering the three sustainability pillars. Original data was collected on 52 products at farm, processing and retail levels, allowing the estimation of circa 2000 indicator values. Most st...

The dataset Sustainability performance of certified and non-certified food ( https://www.doi.org/10.15454/OP51SJ ) contains 25 indicators of economic, environmental, and social performance, estimated for 27 certified food value chains and their 27 conventional reference products. The indicators are estimated at different levels of the value chain:...

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a threat to global food security, and it changes consumers’ food buying and consumption behavior. This research not only investigates trends in Spanish consumers’ general food shopping and consumption habits during the lockdown, but also investigates these trends from the perspective of sustainable purchasing. Specifical...

Extensive and semi-extensive production based on local swine breeds such as Majorcan Black Pig, Cinta Senese, Gascon, Krškopolje and Turopolje is becoming extremely rare and on the verge of disappearing in Europe. In this context, the main aim of this study was to assess the potential feasibility of marketing strategies to act as guidelines for sta...

Food valorisation may be a sustainable solution to prevent and reduce food waste levels. It consists on converting food surpluses and side flows from the original food supply chain into more useful products including, ingredients, food and feed among others. Food surpluses and side flows contain many of high-valuable nutrients (calories, carbohydra...

The continuous decline in fruit and vegetable consumption in developed countries is a growing concern for health authorities, as there is an increase in cardiovascular diseases and obesity, the latter of special importance in children and younger population, from which the consumption of fruit is lower reaching levels below the WHO recommendations...

In this paper, we assess the role of emotions in choices. We elicited emotions using an innovative facial expression analysis approach, and we compared the results to those for a traditional hedonic rating scale. To this end, we conducted an experiment combining surveys and actual wine tasting. The results show that for wines with credence attribut...

The COVID-19 pandemic poses a threat to global food security, and it changes consumers’ food buying and consumption behavior. This research not only investigates trends in Spanish consumers’ general food shopping and consumption habits during the lockdown, but also investigates these trends from the perspective of sustainable purchasing. Specifical...

Some wineries are social integration cooperatives that provide many benefits to society through their social actions. However, wine labels do not usually inform about these social actions. The present paper tested whether consumers are willing to pay a premium price for wines produced by social integration cooperatives. It also tested whether consu...

We conducted a labeled discrete choice experiment (DCE) to assess consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for fresh hens’ eggs produced via different production systems (caged, barn, free-range, or organic). We estimated purchase intentions and WTP for different possible reductions (0%, 10%, 20%, and 30%) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissio...

Los mercados del vino en Europa afrontan nuevas exigencias de demanda en materia de medio ambiente y de salud. Ante este reto, el sector de la viña y el vino necesita explorar la viabilidad técnica y económica de una disminución importante del uso de pesticidas, así como la reducción de los aditivos enológicos. El consumo de vino con certificacione...

Aquaculture products are commonplace in markets around the world. However, despite efforts to minimize the negative perceptions towards aquaculture, several misbeliefs or myths still persist, and thus globally consumers tend to value wild fish more highly than farmed fish . The lack of information has been shown to be one of the most important caus...

La carne de cerdo (CdC) es el segundo tipo de carne producido en el mundo, siendo Europa la segunda región en importancia productiva después de Asia. Dentro del mercado europeo de CdC, Dinamarca y Polonia son dos actores relevantes que presentan algunas diferencias en sus sistemas productivos (SP). El objetivo fue estudiar las variables que explica...

Aim of study: To investigate the impact of adopting new feeding precision technology on pig production. Area of study: Four EU countries (Germany, France, Poland and Spain) during the period 2010–2015. Material and methods: The Färe-Primont index was used to estimate total factor productivity change and its components, technological change and ef...

Obesity is increasing at exponential rates in developed economies despite the numerous policy interventions being implemented. The causes of obesity are multifactorial demanding a holistic review for targeted intervention. This study, therefore, provides a holistic overview of multiple factors affecting body weights i.e., socioeconomic and intraper...

Food quality schemes (FQS: organic and geographical indication products) are often supposed to be more sustainable by their political advocates. We explore the social sustainability advantage of FQS through the lens of supply chains’ bargaining power (BP) distribution. We propose an indicator synthesizing different sources underlying BP (competitio...

This article addresses the issue of the profitability of Food Quality Scheme (FQS) products as compared to reference products, which are defined as analogous products without quality label. We approach this question by taking into account the level of the value chain (upstream, processing, and downstream), the sector (vegetal, animal, seafood) and...

Water Footprint (WF, henceforth) is an indicator of water consumption and has taken ground to assess the impact of agricultural production processes over freshwater. The focus of this study was contrasting non-conventional, certified products with identical products obtained through conventional production schemes (REF, henceforth) using WF as a me...

We study the effect of a set of food quality scheme (FQS) products within the local economy using a local multiplier approach based on LM3 methodology. To evaluate the effective contribution within the local area, we compare each FQS product with its equivalent standard/conventional counterpart. Local multiplier allows us to track the financial flo...

In this paper, we test to what extent Food Quality Schemes (FQS, including Geographical Indications and organic products) contribute to the social and economic sustainability of farmers and regions through employment and education. Through employment, FQS may counter the urban migration trend affecting rural regions, and help retain economic and so...

Due to the climate change and increased attention toward environmental management issues, the agri-food sector has been extensively relying on research, development, and innovation (RDi) to transform conventional agricultural production into a sustainable and eco-friendly industry. While the academic contribution of research has been relatively eas...

Extension services play a crucial role by improving skills and access to information that result in greater farm level innovations, especially on family farms which are the predominant form of agriculture in the world. This study analyzed the connection between strategies implemented by extension services and technology adoption on family farms. Us...

For decades, food quality standards have attracted the interest of governance institutions and regulation authorities, who have responded to the increasing and demanding societal challenges. In addition, the open debate on significant variability and unusually high levels of agrifood prices recorded in 2007 and later in 2011 affect the behavior of...

Studies dealing with obesity have confronted it either from the fiscal policy or from economic cost perspective. There is the need to target fiscal policy goals at the economic cost that obesity imposes on society instead of simulating arbitrary taxes schemes. This paper analyzes the effectiveness of imposing a revenue-neutral fat tax in Spain addr...

This article focuses on the emerging bottled Chilean red wine market and studies the main determinants of the consumer price of wine sold on the domestic market. A hedonic price function was estimated for a sample of 810 wines using a quantile regression (QR) model. The database contains three variable groups to explain price: objective variables (...

This study investigates the substitution and complementary effects for beef mince attributes drawing on data from large choice experiments conducted in the UK and Spain. In both countries, consumers were found to be willing to pay a price premium for the individual use of the labels “Low Fat” (UK: €3.41, Spain: €1.94), “Moderate Fat” (UK: €2.23, Sp...

Aim of study: This study focuses on the preference for and consumption habits of blueberries (Vaccinium corymbosum L.) in an emerging market. The objective is to analyze the determinants of blueberry consumption in Chile and evaluate to what extent traditional factors, such as income and price, are more determinant than other attitudinal factors an...

We conducted a labelled discrete choice experiment (DCE) to assess consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for fresh hens’ eggs produced via different production systems (caged, barn, free range, or organic). We estimated purchase intentions and WTP for different possible reductions (0%, 10%, 20%, and 30%) of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissi...

The Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) Sobrasada de Mallorca de Porc Negre (Sobrasada of Mallorca of Porc Negre or simply Sobrasada of Porc Negre) is made of more noble cuts of Porc Negre pigs from Mallorca, bred in freedom and fed in a completely natural way. The survival of this autochthonous pig breed means that consumers today taste sobras...

The Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) Ternasco de Aragón (lamb from Aragón) in Spain corresponds to a traditional grazing system of five autochthonous breeds, whose economic and environmental advantages enhanced the development of livestock in Aragón for centuries. The Ternasco de Aragón has gone from being a product for special occasions to...

Al igual que el resto de alimentos ecológicos, la demanda de aceite de oliva ecológico crece a un ritmo lento y continúa teniendo un carácter emergente en España. Ante esta situación, se considera importante analizar las preferencias, percepciones y valoraciones de los consumidores acerca del aceite de oliva virgen extra ecológico. Mediante un expe...

Purpose The development of the short food supply chain (SFSC) is one of the issues of the current agri-food systems. Consumers are re-connecting the food they eat with the farming process and are increasingly asking for fresh, seasonal and traceable food products from known producer source. The purpose of this paper is to analyse consumers’ opinion...

Global market for organically grown wine is growing rapidly and winemakers need to better understand consumer perception, attitudes, and purchase intention towards this typology of wine to respond to the worldwide trend. The present work aimed to inform and to assist them assessing consumers’ preferences and willingness to pay for three different r...

There is a large consensus highlighting the need to prevent the food waste volume along the food supply chain. However, there is currently a lack of understanding as to what the most effective anti-food waste measures to be implemented in fact are. The food waste puzzle can be considered from diverse perspectives depending on the stakeholder positi...

This study evaluated the influence on consumers’ wine choices and willingness to pay of taste, image of wine bottle (color and label), and the provision of information on the production system (environmental and public health benefits) and winery's social activities. Results derived from a discrete choice experiment showed that consumers were willi...

Aquaculture provides more than half of the global seafood production and offers a wide diversity of high-quality products. However, its social acceptability is still not well established. The goal of this study was to determine the perceptions of aquaculture by different stakeholders along the seafood value chain in the Barcelona metropolitan area....

Consumer understanding and acceptance of different valorisation methods for food surpluses and side-flows were investigated. Of interest was the extent to which consumers accept and even appreciate products resulting from innovative waste valorisation processes. The requirements were identified for Spaniards to accept the use of valorised products.

A labelled discrete choice experiment (DCE) combined with a blinded wine tasting was conducted among 180 Catalans red wine drinkers to assess their preferences and willingness to pay (WTP) for three different wines: conventional, organic, and selected vintage organic wines in the context of habitual purchase. The DCE was carried out before and afte...

The EU is supporting measures that stimulate enhanced value-added products in order to conserve local and threatened livestock breeds. Several Traditional Pork Products (TPP) and Innovative Traditional Pork Products (ITPP) with health innovations from four untapped pig breeds in Spain (Porc Negre Mallorquí), Croatia (Turopolje), Italy (Cinta Senese...

This paper addresses a set of methodological questions. First, it assesses the variation of the level of ANA in different non-hypothetical CA formats. Second, it explores whether asking respondents to report the attributes they ignored after each choice set or at the end of the choice task yield comparable results. Lastly, it explores the implicati...

Lately, we have witnessed how European Institutions have directed many efforts at improving the effectiveness of food quality schemes (FQS) to address the increasing complexity that has affected all elements of the operating structure of agrifood supply chains worldwide, especially prices. In this paper, we conduct a comparative analysis of the pri...

Consumers’ personality traits are key factors in understanding consumers’ choice and acceptance for health innovations in food products, in particular, food neophobia (FN). The patty product as a traditional pork product (TPP) with two innovative traditional pork products (ITPP) from the untapped pig breed (Porc Negre Mallorquí) in Spain were analy...

This study assesses the comparability of discrete choice experiment (DCE), ranking conjoint analysis (RCA) and multiprofile best–worst scaling (BWS) in a nonhypothetical context in terms of estimated partworths, willingness to pay (WTP), response consistency and external validity. Overall, the results suggest that: (i) the conjoint analysis formats...

Avec la collaboration du Consortium TREASURE Diversité des races locales de porcs et des systèmes de production pour des produits traditionnels de qualité et des filières porcines durables : présentation du projet TREASURE Le projet propose un nouveau paradigme de la production porcine qui vise à développer des filières durables basées sur les race...

Le projet propose un nouveau paradigme de la production porcine qui vise à développer des filières durables basées sur les races locales sous-exploitées. Le programme vise à répondre aux attentes des consommateurs pour la qualité des produits régionaux traditionnels et aux exigences sociétales concernant l'environnement, le bien-être animal et le d...

Les races locales de porcs sont fréquemment élevées dans des systèmes de production extensifs adaptés à l’environnement local et aux ressources disponibles. Ces systèmes sont généralement moins efficaces que les systèmes conventionnels mais produisent des biens publics et services pour la société (biodiversité, qualité de l’air, attractivité du pay...

Within the framework of multifunctional conceptualisation, the authors have investigated the level of public goods embedded in Agri-food geographical indication products. Moving from the concept of the local Agri-food system, the generation of public goods are observed both on the value chain and on the territory. Three different dimensions of publ...