DETERMINANTS OF WILLINGNESS-TO-PAY A PREMIUM PRICE FOR INTEGRATED PEST MANAGEMENT PRODUCED FRUITS AND VEGETABLES IN TRINIDAD

Overuse of pesticide in crop production poses enormous challenges to the health of farm families, consumers, and the environment. Integrated Pest Management (IPM) is an ecosystem approach to crop production that combines different management strategies and practices to grow healthy crops and minimize the use of pesticides. As a result of increasing awareness, education and per capita income, there is an increasing concern for food safety and demand for safe products among consumers of high-income countries. Consequently, this study was conducted among 266 randomly surveyed consumers of an affluent Caribbean country, Trinidad to ascertain the factors influencing consumers’ Willingness-To-Pay (WTP) a premium price for IPM grownfruits and vegetables. The consumers’ responses for the dichotomous question, “Would you be Willing to Pay an additional cost of 10% for the IPM produces from the current market prices?” were analysed using Binary logit regression model. Results indicated that females ageing over 26 years and having children, those with higher annual income and higher level of education were all most likely to pay a premium to obtain IPM grown fruits and vegetables. Willingness-topurchase IPM produce was found to increase with income, education and age. The findings of this study are promising to those developing marketing strategies, besides enabling the producers to understand that producing fruits and vegetables through IPM would fetch them premium.

. IPM systems may also deliver an array of ecosystem goods and services beyond pest control, increasing general resilience at farm and landscape scales (Pretty & Bharucha, 2015).
Overuse of pesticide in crop production poses enormous challenges to the health of farm families, consumers, and the environment (Akter et al., 2018;Bonner & Alavanja, 2017;Popp et al., 2013). Pesticide exposure is linked to various short-term and chronic health hazards including cancer (Kim et al., 2017). An early study indicates that despite several efforts to introduce IPM in Cabbage and Tomato production in Trinidad and Tobago, farmers used pesticide 40% and 100% respectively above the recommended rates. The current policy and IPM research (Wynn et al., 2014) focused on technology and extension approach for promoting IPM practices. The National Food Production Action Plan of Trinidad and Tobago also accentuates on safe food grown locally (MFPLMA, 2011).
There is an extensive literature on IPM and FFS which mainly focus on agronomic practices, behavioural changes, and later on decision making processes, and economics of pest control (e.g. Hashemi & Damalas, 2011;Mengistie et al., 2014;Jørs et al., 2017;Larochelle et al., 2017;Ganpat et al., 2018) Toleubayev et al., 2011;Harris et al., 2013;Chowdhury et al., 2015;Tuz, 2018 (Savary et al., 2012). This is in line with the suggestion that innovation traditions in IPM research should move beyond from development, transfer, adoption and diffusion of crop protection technologies to the holistic approach encouraging interaction among different stakeholders of the agricultural systems (Schut et al., 2014).
In this context , the current study was carried out in high income Caribbean island, Trinidad and Tobago

Survey
The questionnaire was developed primarily to determine the willingness to pay for IPM grown fruits and vegetables Where i is 1,2,…n are observations, Z i is the log odds of choice for the i th observation, β is the parameters to be estimated, ε is the error term. The regressand, Z i in the above equation is the logarithm of the probability that consumers are willing to pay or not premium prices for IPM produces. The probability change that Y i = 1 (P i ) due to a change in X ij is, A binary logit regression model of the following form was fitted to evaluate the determinants of consumers paying premium prices for IPM produces from the current market prices, using the variables as described in Table 1.

Inc_Edn
The binary logit regression model was fitted to evaluate the determinants of consumers' WTP of an additional cost of 10% for the IPM produces from the current market prices, using the variables as described in Table 1.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Fruits and vegetables are major agricultural products in Trinidad.
Simultaneously, the occurrence of pests and diseases are serious concerns in fruits and vegetable production which warrants IPM strategy for successful production of safe food (Pollard 1991;Saravanakumar et al. 2016). A recent study indicates that farmers in Trinidad considered economic viability of the IPM production system (Wynn et al. 2014). To assess the economic viability of IPM, consumer preference will play important roles in determining economics of crop produced by IPM.
Therefore, the study current study was  About two-third of the consumers     (Table 4).
In contrary to the findings of Kiruthika and Selvaraj (2013)   income, education and knowledge on IPM were the major factors deciding the consumers' WTP a premium price for IPM produces. Well educated mothers ageing more than 25 years with monthly household income of TT$ 24000 or more and knowledge on IPM are the potential buyers. The findings of this study are promising to those developing marketing strategies, besides enabling the producers to understand that producing fruits and vegetables through IPM would fetch them premium.
This study reflects an initial exploration of IPM agricultural production as well as potential perspectives for its introduction and development in the Caribbean region. Increasing public awareness of IPM produces together with sound public policy would allow the farmers of this region to specialize and revive traditional, IPM based agricultural production. Alternatively, the consumers of this region will be greatly benefited as they will be offered healthier and tastier products having the reduced level or even no negative influence on environment.