Simeone Mariarosaria, Cinquegrana Morena, Russo Carlo
Department of Law, Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods, University of Sannio, 82100 Benevento, Italy.
Business Management Made in Italy, Bologna Business School, University of Bologna, 40136 Bologna, Italy.
Foods. 2022 May 11;11(10):1392. doi: 10.3390/foods11101392.
The Italian export of agri-food products has been increasingly threatened by the unfair use of misleading Italian symbols (such as the national flag or the green-white-red colors) by non-Italian producers. This research paper investigated what English and Spanish consumers know about "Made in Italy" food, and their attitude towards Italian appearance food products. Primary data were collected in Spain and England, and a probit model was used to identify the determinants of consumers' vulnerability to misleading Italian symbols. We found that merely having Italian symbols on the package might lead almost half of the consumers in the sample to consider food as Made in Italy, regardless of the actual origin. This result confirms the severity of the problem. The econometric model provides suggestions for public actions to mitigate the issue.
意大利农产品出口日益受到非意大利生产商不正当使用误导性意大利符号（如国旗或绿白红三色）的威胁。本研究论文调查了英国和西班牙消费者对“意大利制造”食品的了解程度，以及他们对带有意大利外观的食品的态度。在西班牙和英国收集了原始数据，并使用了一个概率模型来确定消费者易受误导性意大利符号影响的决定因素。我们发现，仅仅在包装上印有意大利符号，可能会使样本中近一半的消费者将食品视为意大利制造，而不论其实际产地。这一结果证实了问题的严重性。计量经济学模型为缓解该问题的公共行动提供了建议。
