Naturally biased? Experimental evidence on how the term natural influences wine consumers’ perceptions and preferences

Food consumption choices have relevant consequences on the environment, and consumers are getting more and more conscious about it. In the absence of perfect information, consumers use signals to infer product quality, but these can also mislead. The object of our work is to test how a label can influence product evaluations and test if halo effects exist after subjects have experienced the product. We focus on wine and the label natural. Using an experimental design in a wine tasting setting, we find that sensory and quality perceptions of the wine are altered by the use of the term natural. The term "natural" is associated with a perceived higher sustainability of the product, potentially misleading the choices of environmentally conscious consumers. However, there is no such effect on the health domain, which would be a deep concern for wine. To drive the influence of the label are the subjects with less wine expertise, for whom information about the naturalness of the wine alters also the evaluation on the health domain.