Title: Paying for the Story: Heritage Narrative against Origin Certification in a Discrete Choice Experiment on Central Highlands Forest Salt
Authors: Le Gia Nhan Kiet
Nguyen Manh Ha
Volume: 10
Issue: 8
Pages: 71-79
Publication Date: 2026/08/28
Abstract:
Origin-based certification is an instrument of rural development policy across Southeast Asia, resting on a premise rarely stated as an empirical claim: that provenance commands a price premium transferable to smallholder producers. Where provenance is communicated as a label the premise is supported; where it is communicated as a story the evidence is thinner, more recent and almost entirely attitudinal. Recent work manipulating heritage storytelling against a geographical indication label finds the story outperforming the certification mark on attitude, which establishes that the two cues are separable and leaves open whether the advantage is monetary. This study supplies a design in which the story must trade off against price. Cultural narrative enters a discrete choice experiment as an attribute alongside origin certification, product type and price, with utility specified directly in willingness-to-pay space, and with a middle narrative level that conveys provenance without narrative form so that the story is priced against a condition in which the consumer already knows the origin. The setting inverts the structure of the entomophagy literature: the insect ingredient is traditional in the producing region and unfamiliar only to the urban buyer, so narrative is not required to reassure against novelty. The estimates indicate a narrative premium above the provenance statement, a larger premium for the insect-based variety, and substantial heterogeneity across three latent segments.