3 are better sustainable firms making more money ? dependency between economic , environmental , social and corporate governance performance

The proliferation of counterfeit goods on the market, constantly, increases with considerable consequences for several economic sectors, including food industry. Authenticity of agri-food products, therefore, becomes a major concern for consumers given the increasing spate of food fraud reports across the world, with olive oil to be the leader in adulterations. Olive oil constitutes a valuable agricultural crop offering significant income to farmers, processors and traders. The high selling price of olive oil is the main reason for conducting adulteration, which often caused through false indications on the packaging (mislabeling) or by adding less expensive oils, leading to the degradation of quality and nutritional value of olive oil. On the other hand, consumers are well aware of the alteration induced in the nutritional value of olive oil by those activities and they are looking for authenticity signals during the purchase process. Authenticity, therefore, becomes an evaluation and decision – making criterion that guides consumer choices. The aim of this paper is twofold: to highlight the attributes in which Greek consumers attached great importance during the evaluation of olive oil’s authenticity and secondly, through consumers’ demographic segmentation, to gain a more detailed knowledge about the attributes that positively evaluated by consumers, for a greater understanding of consumer desires. Specifically, a class of models for ordinal data, namely CUB, has been studied due to the ability of comparing and clustering the rating distributions that consumers express about olive oil's features and due to the ability of detection significant similarities and differences in consumer responses. In addition, with the introduction of respondents’ characteristics, like social, demographic and financially characteristics, CUB models allow the measurement of the influence that consumers’ profile has in the assessment of authenticity in olive oil. In this case study, a survey of 603 consumers was carried out in metropolitan area of Thessaloniki. Participants were asked to rate the importance of a list which includes the extrinsic and intrinsic characteristics of olive oil, using a seven point Likert scale. The results showed that consumers attached great importance to taste, acidity, country and region of origin, olive variety, organic production and to origin certification in the evaluation of olive oil’s authenticity. Furthermore, by the introduction of gender, age, marital status, and education level we gain a more precise knowledge about the influence which consumer’s profile has in the evaluation of olive oil’s authenticity. Specifically, women tend to give to country of origin greater importance than men, during the evaluation of olive oil’s authenticity. The significance, also, increases about country and region of origin, taste and aroma, extra virgin, organic production and certification of origin, as the age increases. Additionally, single participants do not attach great importance to region of origin, acidity, extra virgin, organic production and certification of origin whereas, secondary school graduates tend to use intrinsic attributes like color and taste, indicating, also, confidence in authenticity of organic olive oil.