The purpose of this paper is, by comparing products with a mountain provenance with those from non-mountain areas, to explore whether the market puts a premium on the „mountain attribute‟. First, we present a theoretical framework on attributes and cues that helps answering the question what is “mountain” representing in a products or in other term, is it an attribute or a cue. Second, based on a shelves survey collected as part of the EuroMARC, we analyse for several products (apples, sausages, water and cheese) and countries (Austria, France, Norway, Scotland and Slovenia) using a hedonic price regression approach whether a premium is paid for mountain food products in comparison with identified similar non-mountain food products. The results indicate... |