Assessing the role of regional labels for consumers

The article aims at consolidating the state of academic research in the region-of-origin (RoO) literature. In fact, several authors have investigated the RoO effect on consumers' attitude toward horticultural products, and agri-food products in general: findings suggest different levels of importance for RoO, relative to other products' attribute under consumers' judgement. We systematically review the literature on RoO and build an ad hoc indicator to measure the relative importance of RoO. We conduct a meta-analysis to account for potential publication selection bias and explain heterogeneity in the relative importance of RoO across studies. From our analysis emerges that the relative importance of RoO, although not biased by publication selection, is highly dependent on structural characteristics of studies and, to a lower extent, on issues related to the publication process. In particular, the attitude of consumers toward RoO appears to be product- and origin-specific. Managerial implications are also provided.