Assessing the consumer perception of the term “organic”: a citizens' jury approach

The paper seeks to assess the knowledge consumers have of organic farming and what they would prefer from the organic system.

A citizens' jury (CJ) was held in Penicuik, a small town on the peri‐urban fringe of Southeast Scotland. A CJ consists of a small group of people, selected from the general public, who meet over a number of days to deliberate upon a particular question. The major advantage of this approach is the ability to provide a greater level of technical information and offer fewer time constraints on the deliberation process amongst the group. In the case of dairy farming, the jury was presented with evidence of the economic, environmental and welfare impacts of both conventional and organic systems and asked to recommend its favoured system and how it would define the term “organic”.

The jury's knowledge of certain aspects of farming had improved over the two‐day period and was unanimous in favouring organic agriculture when solely considering the environment, but was mixed towards the animal welfare effects. Conversely, when considering the economic impacts the jury supported the conventional system. This complicated the decision for the group favouring one particular system.

Some bias is introduced into the jury as most citizens either worked or came from an urban background and hence may have less knowledge of dairy systems when compared with those from a rural background. However, most CJs begin from a point where participants have little or no knowledge of the subject and their views are shaped by the CJ process itself.

The findings show the implications of the consumer decision‐making process.

This paper is the first application of a CJ to consider organic food. Previous studies have adopted a questionnaire or focus group approach, both of which impose constraints on information dissemination and time to deliberate on decisions.