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A Better Carbon Footprint Label
... Insights on the effects from carbon labels on consumer choices are mainly based on survey and experimental studies. Typically, the effects on consumer choices are investigated for one selected product category and one specific carbon label (Onozaka and McFadden, 2011;Grunert et al., 2015;Peschel et al., 2016;Apostolidis and McLeay, 2016;Elofsson et al., 2016;Feucht and Zander, 2017;Lombardi et al., 2017;Akaichi et al., 2020;Canavari and Coderoni, 2020;Wynes et al., 2020;Lohmann et al., 2022), although some studies include wider ranges of products categories and compare more than one label (Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016;Meyerding et al., 2019;Carlsson et al., 2021). Rondoni and Grasso (2021) review the literature on carbon labels on food products and conclude that consumers are not well informed about the climate impact from food and that policy makers should develop a consumer-friendly carbon label. ...
... Generally, carbon labels on the market and in experimental studies fall into four categories (Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016): (i) Labels that provide information about the CO 2 equivalents emitted from a unit of the product, based on lifecycle analysis. (ii) A symbol that indicates that the product is low in carbon emissions. ...
... This type of label is potentially most beneficial for high emitting producers that have more room for improvement. (iv) Carbon neutrality was the carbon emissions caused by the production of the product that has been compensated by the company, for example by paying for forestation (Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016). In the following, we focus on labels that inform consumers about carbon emissions from the product in some form. ...
Compared to other policy instruments that aim to change consumer behavior, information provision is perhaps the least controversial. An important question is how information in the form of carbon labels can contribute to direct food consumption toward reduced climate impact. From a policy guidance perspective, there is a need to identify how the labeling strategy affects consumers’ ability to identify lower emitting food products and the behavioral change due to carbon information. Key aspects of a carbon label are discussed, as well as the implications of different labeling schemes. Drawing on economic and behavioral theories, we propose that, to assist consumers in identifying changes in consumption that contribute to significant reductions in their climate impact, a carbon label must enable comparisons between product groups and not only within narrowly defined product groups. This suggests mandatory labeling, since producers of high-emission products are less likely to display such labels. However, it is important to consider both costs and benefits of labeling schemes and to consider complementing labeling with other policy instruments.
... Using labels with traffic light (TL) colors that indicate whether an attribute level (e.g., CO 2 emissions) of a product is considered low (green), medium (yellow), or high (red), is one way to increase consumer understanding of information (Antúnez, Giménez, Maiche, & Ares, 2015;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). Owing to this evaluative information component, TL labels can be classified as being semi-directive (Hodgkins et al., 2012). ...
... Although, no studies on the effects of TL labels on consumer preferences for electricity products have been reported to date, evidence from research on eco-labeling using other products-particularly food-suggests that TL labels indicating carbon emissions are more effective at guiding consumers toward environmentally friendlier choices than no labels (Osman & Thornton, 2019;Slapø & Karevold, 2019), or labels that do not communicate the evaluation of carbon emissions (= non-directive labels) (Meyerding, Schaffmann, & Lehberger, 2019;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). Despite the growing number of studies demonstrating the effectiveness of TL labels in altering consumer behavior, it is still unclear whether these effects are primarily attributable to the additional information (e.g., the relative position of an attribute level) that the TL colors provide or whether the TL colors themselves have an impact on consumer choices. ...
... Labeling systems can be classified as a subset of nudges that provide information in an easily accessible and understandable way. They can be used to reduce information asymmetries and to highlight one or more product characteristics, such as the nutritional value of food, CO 2 emissions over a product's lifecycle, and the energy consumption of appliances (Koenigstorfer, Groeppel-Klein, & Kamm, 2014;Schubert, 2017;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). In the field of research on preferences for electricity products, there are only studies focusing on directive eco-labels or certificates (e.g., Green-e labels, TÜV labels, etc.), which serve as a signal of eco-friendliness by highlighting a product's positive environmental attributes (Atkinson & Rosenthal, 2014). ...
... For example, the Eco Label index 1 alone already lists 455 different eco labels, of which about 35 are carbon labels (and there are still some missing from this list). To distinguish between the different types of carbon labels, several classification systems have been proposed (see Schaefer and Blanke, 2014;Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016;Meyerding et al., 2019;Lemken et al., 2021;Taufique et al., 2022). Taufique et al. (2022), for example, suggested a classification into 4 types of carbon labels: certificate, ordinal rating, quantitative and ordinal plus quantitative rating labels. ...
... If you have to choose between a kiwi and a pineapple, environmental friendliness is only one of the many specifications to consider, along with price, for example. Accordingly, using a discrete choice experiment, Thøgersen and Nielsen (2016) showed Frontiers in Psychology 03 frontiersin.org that consumers' choice, in this case for ground coffee, was more influenced by the price of the product and the presence of an organic label than by a carbon label. ...
... Nevertheless, the carbon label had a positive impact on choice (see also Hartikainen et al., 2014;Hieke et al., 2015;Feucht and Zander, 2017;Dihr et al., 2021, or Meyerding et al., 2019. Additionally, Thøgersen and Nielsen (2016) showed that their colored version of the label (i.e., an ordinal plus quantitative rating label) performed better than the one without colors, which accordingly only showed the CO 2 e content in g (i.e., a quantitative label). A similar result was observed in the study by Meyerding et al. (2019), who also used a discrete choice experiment to examine how 6 different labels affected tomato choices. ...
Introduction
A conventionally grown kiwi from Spain or an organic pineapple from Ghana? Which is the more environmentally friendly option? Given that the production and distribution of food is responsible for about a quarter of our CO 2 e emissions and thus plays a role in climate change the answer to such questions and, accordingly, making the right food product choices is crucial. The problem, however, is that it is difficult for consumers to calculate the CO 2 e value of food as it depends on several specifications such as the type of food, origin, etc. Could carbon labeling of food circumvent this problem and help consumers make more environmentally friendly choices?
Methods
In an online experiment, 402 participants had to choose 20 food products from a fictitious online shop. The participants were randomly assigned to either one of three food labeling conditions (Star Rating, Green Foot, and Traffic Light Label, short TLL) or the control condition.
Results
The labeling conditions resulted in lower overall CO 2 e emissions, the purchase of more green food products and fewer red food products than in the control condition. The TLL outperformed the other two labels and was also the most accepted.
Discussion
The carbon TLL is therefore a promising intervention to help consumers to not only choose more environmentally friendly foods, but also make a significant contribution to the fight against climate change.
... In order for consumers to be able to consider such trade-offs, they require transparent information on the environmental impact of their choices through carbon labeling (Gadema and Oglethorpe, 2011). Thøgersen and Nielsen (2016) have shown that it is better to use easy-to-understand carbon labels (e.g. traffic light labels) as there seems to be a lack of understanding amongst consumers about the real impact of CO 2 emissions. ...
... Lastly, previous studies have tried to understand the effectiveness of different carbon labels under the premise that the meaning of a gram of carbon dioxide can be difficult to understand for the average consumer without any additional background information. Thøgersen and Nielsen (2016) concluded that more explanatory labels seem to be more effective in changing consumer behaviour. ...
... Second, the way CO 2 emissions are displayed to consumers does have an impact, as shown by the support to H 5 . In accordance toThøgersen and Nielsen (2016) there is seemingly a lack of understanding about the environmental impact a given unit of CO 2 can have. Based on the results shown in table 10, it seems that when respondents were given context on their personal CB and were then displayed the flights' emissions as a percentage of their CB, this increased their awareness on how their chosen flight could impact the environment and increased the extent to which they value it (confirmed by the higher MVES and TVES). ...
By 2050, aviation emissions are forecasted to account for 25% of the global carbon budget. Thus, in addition to airlines’ sustainability efforts, individual consumer action is needed in order to reduce the environmental impact of air travel. The purpose of this paper is to investigate to what extent consumers value environmental sustainability when selecting flights in terms of the trade-off between cost, time, comfort, and CO2 emissions. Hence, a choice-based conjoint survey was conducted to understand the monetary, temporal, and comfort trade-offs consumers are willing to make for a reduction in CO2 emissions in both short-haul and long-haul flights. The 426 collected responses were analysed using conditional logistic regressions. The results indicate that air travellers are willing to pay more (6.7–21.2 €/100kg) or travel longer (13–41 minutes/100kg) to reduce the environmental impact of their trip. Moreover, displaying CO2 emissions as a percentage of an individual’s annual carbon budget increased air travellers’ perceived monetary and temporal value of environmental sustainability, to 11.8–26.3 €/100kg and 22-65 minutes/100kg respectively.
... On the one hand, adding information about the ecological impact of the dishes is feasible and both customers and restaurants have expressed an interest in such information [14,15]. Carbon labels that provide information about products' GHG emissions have the potential to reduce the carbon footprint of consumer choices [16,17]. Analogously, the field of health promotion has provided meta-analytic evidence that health-related labels move people toward healthier food choices [18]. ...
... According to a recent review of behaviorally informed interventions aimed at climate-friendly food consumption [10], carbon labels can be classified as disclosures when they provide ecological information about a food item (e.g., GHG emissions) and as warnings when the label features salient information connoted with emotional value (e.g., traffic-light colors). There are several studies in the context of health- [18,[23][24][25] and environment-related food choice [16,17,[23][24][25][26][27] in which the examined labels combined these two types of nudging. In other studies, default and non-default dishes were varied systematically on menus or board menus [28][29][30][31]. ...
... Labels that indicate food items' GHG emissions have been examined in dining [23,26,27,42,43] and grocery shopping [16,17,24,25,44] settings. In most cases, such labels combine explicit information (disclosure) with a color signal (warning; [10]). ...
In this study, we aimed to understand how restaurants can contribute to climate change mitigation via menu design. We investigated two types of interventions: changing the configuration of menu entries with variable side dishes so that the most climate-friendly option is set as the default and indicating the greenhouse gas emission of each dish via carbon labels . In an online simulation experiment, 265 participants were shown the menus of nine different restaurants and had to choose exactly one dish per menu. In six menus, the main dishes were presented with different default options: the side dish was associated either with the highest or with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions. The other three menus consisted of unitary dishes for which the default rules did not apply. All menus were presented either with or without carbon labels for each dish option. The results indicated that more climate-friendly dish choices resulting in lower greenhouse gas emissions were made with the low-emission than the high-emission default condition, and when carbon labels were present rather than absent. The effects of both interventions interacted, which indicates that the interventions partly overlap with regard to cognitive predecessors of choice behavior, such as attentional focus and social norms. The results suggest that the design of restaurant menus has a considerable effect on the carbon footprint of dining.
... In addition, a number of studies have shown that consumer attitudes towards environmental impact of food is less important than other factors such as health (Hartmann and Siegrist, 2017;Gracia and De Magistris, 2007), price (e.g. Liobikienė et al., 2016;Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016;Young et al., 2009) and place of origin (Stanton et al., 2018;Denver and Dejgaard Jensen, 2014;Adams and Salois, 2010), in influencing consumers´food product choices. ...
... Rather, studies show that consumers are currently confused by labelling of food products (e.g. Lindahl and Jonell, 2020;White et al., 2019;Röös and Tjärnemo, 2011) and that the design of simpler labels (Emberger-Klein and Menrad, 2018;Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016;Young et al., 2009), as well as labels that include a reference value or that have a user-focused design perform better (Camilleri et al., 2019;Emberger-Klein and Menrad, 2018;Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016). ...
... Rather, studies show that consumers are currently confused by labelling of food products (e.g. Lindahl and Jonell, 2020;White et al., 2019;Röös and Tjärnemo, 2011) and that the design of simpler labels (Emberger-Klein and Menrad, 2018;Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016;Young et al., 2009), as well as labels that include a reference value or that have a user-focused design perform better (Camilleri et al., 2019;Emberger-Klein and Menrad, 2018;Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016). ...
While consumers often intend to shop more sustainably, food shopping decision-making is complex, involving a decision-making process that is shaped by factors occurring outside of the moment of purchase. Consumers are increasingly being targeted with information aiming to influence their decision-making, but the change mechanisms of such interventions are poorly understood. This study aimed to identify key factors influencing people's capability, opportunity and motivation to make more environmentally sustainable choices when food shopping, and how information can support such behaviour change. Using the COM-B model of behaviour change, we conducted a consumer survey and qualitative interviews with Swedish consumers to identify how capability, opportunity, and motivation to engage in sustainable shopping are influenced, and how consumers use information when food shopping. From our data we mapped a typical customer journey and pinpointed where information could be applied as a technique for supporting behaviour change towards more sustainable food shopping choices.
The key factors motivating the choice were found to be quality, health, locally produced food, animal welfare and convenience. The main constraints to consumers' capability and opportunity to engage in sustainable food shopping were price and time. Our findings suggest that information can be a powerful behaviour change technique if tailored to customers' full shopping journey, including planning, executing, and reflecting on their food shopping. Understanding food shopping as a set of interacting behaviours playing out over time could help to design more effective information-based behaviour change interventions.
... The success of labelling also depends on consumers' knowledge and understanding of sustainability. Consumer awareness is a key prerequisite for the emergence and growth of sustainability labels (Grunert et al., 2014;Kijek, 2015;Pedersen & Neergaard, 2006;Peschel et al., 2016;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). ...
... Mandatory labels may also help overcome "free-riding" by consumers who are concerned about sustainability, but who rely on others to pay the premium prices for labelled products (Lusk, 2011). Mandatory (multi-level) labelling can ensure that operators not only adopt labelling on products that already perform well, but work on improving other products too (Bablani et al., 2020), and allows operators whose products are not in the worst-performing level to differentiate and dissociate their products from the unsustainable ones (Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016;Weinrich & Spiller, 2016). ...
... Any sustainability labelling scheme must gain credibility among stakeholders to have an impact in the market place, and must create consumer awareness of the scheme to increase demand for labelled products (Earley & Kneale Anderson, 2003;Erskine & Collins, 1997). Therefore, education and communication strategies will be needed to explain the scheme once it is introduced and to boost awareness about related sustainability issues Kelly & Jewell, 2018;Kijek, 2015;Leach et al., 2016;Liu et al., 2016;Peschel et al., 2016;Storcksdieck et al., 2020;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). ...
Free full-text access to a view-only version of the paper: https://rdcu.be/cBQoY || Abstract: Improving the sustainability of the global food system is a policy priority. There are multiple types of sustainability labels in the food market, and policy-makers need to know what constitutes an effective label. We discuss the use of labels to inform consumers about the economic, social and environmental sustainability implications of their food purchasing choices. We categorise these sustainability labels and explain the opportunities they offer and the challenges they pose to be effective. Improved consumer information on the sustainability of food products can serve as an incentive for operators in the food supply chain to increase their sustainability. Specific choices made on the type of food label used are likely to affect their. A comprehensive mandatory labelling and certification scheme is a promising course of action from a policy perspective, if it covers the multiple dimensions of sustainability, and uses scoring and evidence-based criteria.
... In this vein, research on nutritional labeling demonstrated that interpretive summary indicators (aggregating nutritional facts to an overall nutritional value) are most easily understood by consumers, helping them identify healthier options (Ikonen, Sotgiu, Aydinli, & Verlegh, 2020). Furthermore, multiple studies found support for the positive impact of color-coding and traffic-light labeling (Emberger-Klein & Menrad, 2018;Feucht & Zander, 2018;Meyerding, Schaffmann, & Lehberger, 2019;Muller et al., 2019;Osman & Thornton, 2019;Panzone et al., 2020;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). It allows consumers to use simple heuristics (e.g., 'choose green, avoid red') during shopping (Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). ...
... Furthermore, multiple studies found support for the positive impact of color-coding and traffic-light labeling (Emberger-Klein & Menrad, 2018;Feucht & Zander, 2018;Meyerding, Schaffmann, & Lehberger, 2019;Muller et al., 2019;Osman & Thornton, 2019;Panzone et al., 2020;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). It allows consumers to use simple heuristics (e.g., 'choose green, avoid red') during shopping (Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). In light of these findings, a color-coded product ranking that lists products according to their eco-score (overall environmental impact) should help consumers identify sustainable products and, thereby, drive sustainable choice. ...
... In step 1, the basic eco-ranking group saw a screenshot of the product ranking, only containing the eco-ranking information in a numeric and verbal form (1 = "very good" to 6 = "less recommended"; see Fig. 2). The eco-ranking information was colorcoded from green to red to help consumers interpret the information (Osman & Thornton, 2019;Panzone et al., 2020;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). The extended eco-ranking group received the link to a browser-based mobile app, which displayed a comprehensive overview of each product's eco-ranking and key metrics (transportation distance 2 and type of certification; Fig. 2). ...
Consumers often struggle to assess food's environmental impact. A product ranking based on a standardized scoring approach (aggregating multiple indicators) that is easily accessible, for instance, via a mobile app, could serve as a simple decision aid for consumers. However, to avoid information overload, research is needed in which format such information should be presented. This paper examines how different information levels of an eco-score ranking influence decision uncertainty and sustainable food choice. In an online experiment (n = 332, representative by age and gender), we compared a basic eco-ranking and an extended eco-ranking (eco-rank plus additional indicators: transportation distance and eco-certifications) against a control group (no eco-ranking) in three different food categories: milk, juice, and eggs. The basic eco-ranking successfully lowered decision uncertainty compared to the two other groups. In contrast, the extended eco-ranking did not reduce consumers' decision uncertainty level. Further, the basic (extended) eco-ranking increased the likelihood of choosing a sustainable product by 26 (17) percentage points compared to the control group. Thus, providing access to a simple eco-ranking can help avoid information overload and increase sustainable consumption.
... For these reasons, over the last decade, several labels have been developed to facilitate consumers to make more sustainable choices (Grunert et al., 2014). One of the most well-known is the Carbon Footprint (CF) labelling scheme, which was developed in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2007, and was defined as "a measure of the total emission of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide and methane) caused by a particular product throughout its life cycle" (Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016). The scope of these labels is to provide companies with a tool to inform consumers about the carbon impact of their food production (Kimura et al., 2010). ...
... Between the carbon and the water footprint labels, German consumers seem to be more familiar with the carbon rather than with the water footprint label (Grebitus et al., 2016). In the context of environmentally-friendly labels, Danish consumers were found unable to make purchasing decisions based on footprint labels as they found them hard to understand (Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016). Hartikainen et al. (2014) showed that while Finnish consumers were familiar with the term 'product carbon footprint', only few were able to describe it accurately. ...
... Some research tried to develop consumers friendlier CF labels and showed that they can make a significant impact on consumers' decision-making. For instance, Thøgersen and Nielsen (2016) showed that by re-designing the CF label and making it similar to the more commonly used traffic lights, assessing the green color for low GHG products' emissions, the yellow for slightly acceptable ones and the red for those with higher environmental impact, Danish consumers significantly drove their purchase to more sustainable food products. Similarly, Vlaeminck et al. (2014) found that a color-graded scale accompanied with a numeric symbol from 1 to 10 indicating the grade of product's environmental friendliness could better drive Belgian consumers' behavior towards more sustainable food choices. ...
Carbon footprint labels allow manufactures to show information about the impact that their food production has on the environment, as well as to help consumers make more sustainable choices. Thus, investigating consumers’ reaction towards carbon footprint labels is vital to understand their effectiveness. The aim of this manuscript is to identify the state of the art and research gaps on this topic, by conducting a literature review of published scientific article between 2011 and 2020. In total, 38 papers emerged. Findings show that females, adults, with higher income and educational level have a more positive attitude towards carbon footprint labels. Furthermore, people expressing higher environmental concern and those who are used to buy eco-friendly labelled foods are willing to pay more for carbon footprint labelled foods. However, it also emerges that consumers still have poor knowledge of carbon measurements and the existing carbon footprint label system is still unclear. When carbon footprint labels are re-designed using consumers friendly symbols (e.g., traffic light colours), consumers’ understanding significantly increases. Consumers from countries like Egypt and China also show a positive attitude towards carbon footprint information, meaning that a carbon footprint label system should be developed also in the emerging countries. Nonetheless, when carbon footprint is presented with other labels (e.g., organic, Fair Trade etc.) consumers show the lowest willingness to pay for carbon footprint information. It was also found that using a carbon footprint label on environmentally sustainable produced foods (e.g., using upcycled ingredients) increases willingness to pay. Food manufacturers should better inform consumers on carbon footprint labels and policy makers are advised to develop a consumers friendlier carbon footprint label system to incentivize more sustainable choices. This paper is the first to summarize existing literature on consumers’ behaviour for carbon footprint labelled foods, providing a discussion of the implications for food manufacturers and policy makers, as well as future research avenues.
... A review of extant empirical research finds mixed results for the effectiveness of TLL in increasing sustainable consumption. In discrete choice tasks conducted online, carbon TLL of food products shifted hypothetical consumer choices toward more sustainable options (Bernard et al., 2015;Feucht & Zander, 2017;Osman & Thornton, 2019), increased the effectiveness of the CFL (Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). For instance, Osman and Thornton (2019) explored hypothetical consumer choices in a mock cafeteria scenario and found that TLL of both C0 2 e and calorie content shifted food consumption toward more sustainable and more healthy options respectively. ...
... Traffic light labels TLL of the carbon content of meal options was found to encourage sustainable meal choices on its own (Experiment 1) when judged relative to the use of a carbon tax, and against baseline; though the TLL appeared to have a greater impact on choice behavior when combined with other measures. The former is consistent with previous work by Osman and Thornton (2019) and other prior studies examining TLL to encourage sustainable choices in hypothetical choice tasks (Bernard et al., 2015;Feucht & Zander, 2017;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). ...
... The results of the present study suggest that TLL of carbon content is less effective at shifting meal choices when studied in relation to other combinations of interventions where pricing is taken into account. This explanation is supported by the results of other studies that showed greater precedence of price over labeling in determining consumer preferences (French et al., 2001;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016;Vanclay et al., 2011). Secondly, the dependent variable of the present study was the total C0 2 e content of meal choices, which was a continuous quantitative variable. ...
Behavioral change techniques may show positive changes to sustainable consumption, but as with many other domains, how they interact with other typical regulatory measures is unknown. To address the empirical lacuna, the present study uses a discrete-choice set-up to simulate a lunchtime canteen in order to investigate the effects of choice preserving and choice incentivizing interventions on meal choices. Carbon tax (Experiment 1, Experiment 2) alone, behavioral interventions (Experiment 1) alone, as well in combination (Experiment 1, Experiment 2) shifted choices to a less degree than in combination. The most compelling positive behavioral change was found when introducing a redistributive pricing system that combines carbon tax and subsidies (Experiment 2), in combination with choice preserving instruments (Experiment 2, Experiment 3).
... The present study was a randomised controlled trial with two experimental arms (with vs. without environmental labelling) conducted in a virtual reality supermarket that included a large and diverse range of food products that could be part of a main meal. We aimed to develop a new traffic-light front-of-pack environmental label with a design based on state-of-the-art evidence [26][27][28] and that differentiated food products across food categories, to support between-categories substitutions. Participants performed food choice tasks for an everyday meal and for an environmentally friendly meal. ...
... It has been shown that green is often seen as a validation and a positive colour whereas red is associated to negative aspects and danger [27]. As traffic-light labels are the most effective type of labels to increase understanding and promote behaviour change [28], the French blue label depicting the environmental impact of products or services (other than food) was adapted to obtain a traffic light label (see supplementary file, Note S4). The final environmental label depicted five levels of environmental impact, from A (the lowest) to E (the highest), that were based on the Environmental Footprint (EF) single score calculated for each product (Fig. 2). ...
Background
Food systems highly contribute to anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and shifting towards more environmentally friendly diets is urgently needed. Enabling consumers to compare the environmental impact of food products at point-of-purchase with front-of-pack labelling could be a promising strategy to trigger more environmentally friendly food choices. This strategy remained to be tested.
Methods
The effect of a new traffic-light front-of-pack environmental label on food choices was tested in a 2-arm randomised controlled trial in a virtual reality supermarket. Participants ( n = 132) chose food products to compose two main meals for an everyday meal scenario and for an environmentally friendly meal scenario with or without the label. The environmental label (ranging from A: green/lowest impact, to E: red/highest impact) was based on the Environmental Footprint (EF) single score calculation across food categories. The effect of the label on the environmental impact of food choices in each scenario was tested using linear mixed models.
Results
In the everyday meal scenario, the environmental impact of meals was lower in the label condition than in the no label condition (-0.17 ± 0.07 mPt/kg, p = 0.012). This reduction was observed at no nutritional, financial nor hedonic cost. The effectiveness of the label can be attributed to a change in the food categories chosen: less meat-based and more vegetarian meals were chosen with the label. In the environmentally friendly meal scenario, we demonstrated that the label provided new information to the participants as they were able to further reduce the environmental impact of their food choices with the label (-0.19 ± 0.07 mPt/kg, p = 0.005).
Conclusions
Implementing a front-of-pack environmental label on food products in real supermarkets could increase awareness of the environmental impact of food and contribute to drive more environmentally friendly food choices.
Trial registration
The study protocol was pre-registered prior to data collection at Clinicaltrials.gov (NCT04909372).
... It has been proven that the simple number of calculated CO₂-eq is not helpful for consumers. To generate an added value with the CF labels, costumers have to a) be able to compare products or b) need a color code as an eva-lua4on on how the product performs [34] [35] [36]. ...
... Only a ra4ng makes the assessment valuable to the customer and can support purchase decisions and comparisons. The color code behind the leDers helps the customer assess which leDer is "the best" and which one is "the worst" [34] [35] [36]. An example of a PCF label similar to the Nutri-score is shown in figure 16. ...
The effects of climate change show the importance of mitigating the effects of
rising temperatures like extreme weather events (e.g. droughts). Hereby, the
industry sector and especially energy production are the biggest greenhouse
gas emitter worldwide. Consequently, companies have to reduce their carbon
footprint. Nevertheless, it is often argued that customers should make
sustainable shopping choices and in doing so influence retailers to become
more sustainable. However, to enable consumers to purchase climate-friendly
products, they need a reliable source of information. Therefore, companies
should calculate the carbon footprint for each of their products. The product
carbon footprint (PCF) is most commonly evaluated with the Greenhouse Gas
Protocol Product Standard, the PAS 2050, or the ISO 14067. In this whitepaper,
these three standards are compared based on their different rules of calculati-
on, result, and usability. The main calculation differences were found in the ca-
tegories cut-off-criteria, capital goods, allocation & recycling, reporting, stored
carbon, land-use change, green electricity, and uncertainty assessment. The
GHG product standard has the most detailed explanations and guidelines. Fur-
thermore, improvements to the standards are proposed to enhance their appli-
cation and comparability. This is important to offer customers reliable informa-
tion to enable climate-friendly choices.
... Due to the project's budgetary constraints, participants in the study were not financially rewarded, although they were offered the possibility of receiving information regarding the results of the research. The final sample consisted of 362 consumers who sent valid answers and can be considered as a representative sample of the Spanish population in terms of age (the residents in Spain within a range of [19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] years are approximately 20% of the population; those aged between 35 and 50 account for 28% and those aged more than 50 years represent 52% [46]) and in terms of sex (with 49% of the residents in Spain being males and 51% females [46]), with the maximum error being 4.6% and a 95% confidence interval. ...
Carbon footprint has become a reference indicator of the environmental impact of food production. Governments are increasingly demanding a trend towards low-carbon-footprint production in order to reduce the impact on climate change. In this sense, the study of consumers’ preferences and assessment of products from the perspective of their carbon footprint is crucial to achieve a green and circular economy. This paper specifically attempted to assess consumer preference and will-ingness to pay for beef that has been carbon-footprint-labelled as an attribute. In order to attain this objective, a choice experiment was designed and applied to a total of 362 Spanish consumers. The results revealed a positive preference towards beef produced in low-carbon-footprint systems. In addition, the segmentation of these consumers revealed the existence of a group of consumers who prioritise environmental impact over product price.
... • Third-party labels generally tend to gain higher consumer trust (e.g., Atkinson & Rosenthal, 2014;Gordon et al., 2011;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016;Majer et al., 2022) than corporate-based information that may inspire perceptions of greenwashing (Delmas & Burbano, 2011). Nevertheless, some studies outlined that the combined use of third-party labels and self-declared claims leads to the highest perceptions of credibility and product quality (Ertz et al., 2017;Rossi & Rivetti, 2020). ...
This paper aimed to investigate consumer scepticism towards third-party sustainability labels in the context of food products, evaluating its role in the formation of the customer’s buying behaviour. A covariance-based structural equation model (CB-SEM) was developed, and it included the customer’s socio-environmental concern, scepticism toward sustainability labels, reported use of the socio-environmental commitment declared by the producer, and purchase behaviour of sustainably-labelled food products. The model was tested on a sample of 311 Italian high-educated young consumers, a group of sustainability-conscious individuals. The findings highlight that purchase behaviour is positively influenced by two reciprocally-related variables: socio-environmental concern and the reported use of the socio-environmental commitment declared by the producer. While other studies have ascertained that scepticism is an antecedent of purchase behaviour, this study findings highlight it can also be considered a mediator of the relationships between purchase behaviour and other antecedents considered in this model. In addition to advancing the study on the role of scepticism in the formation of purchasing decisions for food products, drawing on signalling theory, this study provides insights for practitioners and policymakers, highlighting the absolute necessity to reassure consumers about the credibility of third-party sustainability labels and providing them with the instruments needed to distinguish the truth from the fluff in sustainability communication.
... Nowadays, one of the most recognizable sustainability label is the CF label. The CF labelling concept was initially developed in 2007 in the UK and defined as "a measure of the total emission of carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases such as nitrous oxide and methane) caused by a particular product throughout its life cycle" (Thøgersen and Nielsen 2016). Since 2007, CF labelling is rapidly implemented on the products, so many studies and consumer preferences surveys have been conducted in different countries such as Finland, Sweden, China, UK and Italy to explore consumers' perceptions on CF labels, attitudes towards sustainability purchases, whether or not consumers seek information about products' sustainable manufacturing on the packaging and if they are willing to pay more for sustainable products (Rondoni and Grasso 2021;Wong et al. 2020;Hartikainen et al. 2014;Moser 2016;Steiner et al. 2017;Laureti and Benedetti 2018;Grebitus et al. 2015;Gadema and Oglethorpe 2011;Zhao et al. 2018;Van Loo et al. 2014;Canavari and Coderoni 2019). ...
Freshwater is crucial for food supply, as irrigation water and as production or incorporated water in industrial production of consumer goods (e.g. food, cosmetics). Manufacturing industries follow different protocols and receive different certifications for water management and efficiency in their plants, which are also labelled on the packaging. Nowadays, consumers appear to be increasingly concerned about environmental challenges, therefore many sustainability labels have been developed (carbon, water, ecological footprint) to facilitate consumers to make more sustainable choices concerning their purchases. Consumers’ behaviour towards carbon footprint labels has been thoroughly examined in international literature; however, WF labelling studies are very limited. The key to water efficiency labelling in consumer products could be the water footprint (WF), as it measures the total volume of freshwater used to produce a product, over the full supply chain, including virtual water, “hidden” in the products, services and processes. The implementation of WF labelling of consumer products in Greece was investigated, using a questionnaire with demographical data and statements on water sustainability. The results indicate that younger consumers are not quite aware of environmental challenges related to water. According to the findings, WF could be an effective marketing driver towards water sustainability since consumers prefer a quantified label concerning water consumption, regardless of their educational level, and they are willing to pay an extra price for water sustainable products even if they have an unstable job. Manufacturers could then promote their sustainable profile and performance effectively by adopting a WF relevant labelling.
... So far, studies have yielded mixed results; while some studies suggest eco-labelling has little influence on consumers' food choices (Leire & Thidell, 2005;Padel & Foster, 2005;Vermeir & Verbeke, 2006), others have found that eco-labels increase sustainable food consumption (Vanclay et al., 2011;Slapø & Karevold, 2019). Labels such as the 'Traffic Light Index', which condenses information provided on the products' environmental footprint, in the form of a traffic light with green (sustainable), yellow (moderate) and red (unsustainable) indicators, have been shown to be a viable and effective meta label that is easy to understand by consumers (Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). ...
This randomised online experiment aimed to investigate how eco-labelling and social nudging influenced sustainable food choice, as well as consider the effect of motivation to act sustainably. Participants were UK adults ≥18 years ( n = 1399). Participants were asked to choose a hypothetical meal (beef, chicken or vegetarian burrito) and were randomly allocated to one of three conditions varying in labelling: eco-labelling; social nudge or control (no label). Co-primary outcomes were the frequency that the vegetarian and chicken burritos were chosen (i.e., the more sustainable food choices). There was evidence that more vegetarian (OR = 3.3 [95% CI 2.0, 5.3]) and chicken (OR = 2.5 [95% CI 1.8, 3.4]) burrito choices were made in the eco-label condition, over the beef burrito, compared to the control condition. In the social nudge condition, there was evidence that participants chose a vegetarian burrito over a beef burrito (OR = 1.7 [95% CI 1.1, 2.7]), but not a vegetarian burrito over a chicken burrito (OR = 1.4 [95% CI 0.9, 2.2]). Although both labels were effective at promoting participants to make more sustainable food choices, the eco-label was the most effective. Choice of burrito was modified by motivation to act sustainably across all conditions. This study suggests that future policy could include eco-labelling and/or a social nudge to reduce meat consumption and meet global climate change targets.
... No differences were observed in baseline characteristics between the four groups. However, further analyses were still adjusted for some of these characteristics because either the literature shows an influence of those variables over food choices and habits (Campos, Doxey, & Hammond, 2011;Drichoutis, 2005;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016), or the research team a priori considered them as influential. For all primary analyses, we present both raw and adjusted models. ...
While food and dietary patterns are major determinants of a population’s health, our daily food choices also put pressure on the environment. In that context, providing graphical and comprehensive information is a widely used and potentially promising communication tool to promote healthier and more environmentally sustainable choices when eating out-of-home. Hence, the purpose of this study was to assess the influence of information about environmental impact and nutritional quality of meal options on consumers’ food choices, consumption and perceptions. A total of 80 men and 80 women were recruited, consisting of students and employees of Université Laval (Quebec City, Canada). Participants were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions, with menu information displaying: 1) greenhouse gas emissions scores, 2) nutritional quality scores, 3) eco-efficiency scores or 4) no information (control). Participants had to choose between two meals (i.e., beef burritos or chicken meal) both showing one of the above-mentioned conditions and then consume the chosen meal. Results indicated that nutritional and environmental information had an impact on meal choice. More specifically, participants exposed to such information tended to choose more frequently the meal with the most favorable score for the related condition (p-values < 0.05). However, no impact was observed on the amount of food consumed (p-values > 0.05). These findings suggest that communicating information about environmental impact and nutritional quality of menu items to consumers within institutional settings could be relevant to tackle more sustainable food choices.
... Effectiveness of different types of carbon footprint labels has been tested in experimental studies. In a discrete choice experiment, Thøgersen and Nielsen (2016) compared the effectiveness of a numerical Carbon Trust label and the same label accompanied with coloured cues. By choosing coffee as the experimental product, participants were divided into two groups so that while one group was presented with the former label, the other group with the latter. ...
I investigated the impact of economic and non-monetary instruments on sustainable grocery consumption. I tested whether these instruments reduce carbon footprint of shopping baskets and increase CO2 knowledge in an experimental online grocery shop. In the first empirical chapter, I disentangled the price effect and psychological impact of carbon tax by testing the effect of price adjustments, injunctive norms, and tax salience on basket CO2. In the second experiment, the impact of traffic lights carbon labels were also tested. Over two experiments, little or no impact of carbon tax on consumption was found. However, I found that carbon labels decreased basket CO2. While tax signposts did not improve knowledge, carbon labels and norms did. In the second empirical chapter, I decomposed the psychological and price effect of bonus-malus tax by testing the effect of price adjustments, tax salience, and tax justification messages on basket CO2. In the second experiment, I tested whether carbon labels had an impact on basket CO2 and knowledge. Over two experiments, no effect of bonus-malus on basket CO2 was found. However, carbon labels decreased basket CO2 and improved knowledge. I found evidence for the impact of tax signposts on knowledge. Additionally, in these first two empirical chapters, it was found that knowledge was a mediator of the relationship between labels and consumption. In the third empirical chapter, I investigated the impact of goal setting techniques and of the provision of carbon footprint information about the products and the basket on consumption and compared their effectiveness. Over three experiments, it was found that goal-setting techniques were effective in reducing basket CO2. Multiple visits ameliorated knowledge, in the goal setting condition, even though it did not decrease basket CO2. While colour coded labels, on their own, did not have an impact on basket CO2, numerical labels did, after combing the data of two experiments.
... Therefore, well-established labelling institutions might be most interesting for producers (Janssen and Hamm, 2012). Consistent with this, research shows that certification from a public authority may be preferred over other types of labelling schemes (Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016). ...
Demand-side mitigation solutions such as changing peoples' consumption behaviors can substantially help limit climate change (IPCC, 2022). Labelling schemes are a promising tool to promote more sustainable consumption behavior by reliably informing the consumers about the performance of a product regarding a range of environmental, ethical, or social aspects. However, labelling has been conceptualized in different ways, approached from various disciplinary backgrounds, examined through diverse research designs, and tested across manifold product categories and contexts. The present research synthesizes the dispersed empirical evidence on the effects of visual sustainability labels on consumer perception and behavior by systematically reviewing the literature. In a two-step screening process, a set of predetermined criteria was used to ultimately identify 26 eligible studies. We narratively and quantitatively synthesized the empirical findings. Our aggregated findings suggest that labels do have positive effects on psychological and behavioral outcome variables. In addition, we identify a number of important moderating variables that can be categorized as individual factors of the consumers, as context factors in the purchase situation, and as factors inherent in the label itself. However, the reviewed body of literature reveals deficiencies in studying interactions of labels and external factors and in studying actual behavior change in field settings. Based on these insights gained from the systematic review, we propose avenues for advancements in the field of research and highlight implications for promoting sustainable consumer behavior.
... This literature has identified a combination of traffic-light design with a scale that puts information into context as the most comprehensible and more frequently trusted label design (e.g. Feucht & Zander, 2018;Meyerding et al., 2019;Muller et al., 2019;Panzone et al., 2020;Spaargaren et al., 2013;Thøgersen & Nielsen, 2016). We employed two UK-based graphic designers to create a set of label designs for the experiment and conducted an online survey with a small student sample ( = 93) from UK universities, recruited via Prolific Academic, to validate the most promising design. ...
Human behaviour lies at the heart of the climate crisis. Not only is it the primary cause of global climate change and environmental degradation, but also key to responding and adapting to them. Tackling the climate crisis thus requires a complete understanding of human behaviour. So far, however, environmental policies have largely been guided by the canonical economic model of human behaviour, based on the idea of ‘homo economicus’, neglecting important behavioural aspects of the relationship between human behaviour and the environment. This thesis examines some of the complex interrelations between human behaviour and the environment through a behavioural environmental economics lens, drawing on recent insights from behavioural economics and psychology. The first part of this thesis (Chapters 1 and 2) focuses on the impact of environmental stressors on human behaviour, attitudes and beliefs. The second part (Chapters 3 and 4) examines the impact of policy interventions to foster more environmentally sustainable behaviour. All chapters adopt an experimental or quasi-experimental approach to provide causal insights and formulate robust policy recommendations. Chapter 1 develops and tests a novel experimental design, that exploits natural discontinuities in air pollution episodes in Beijing, China to experimentally isolate the causal effect of acute air pollution on social decision-making and economic preferences. Chapter 2 utilises data from a natural experiment to estimate the causal effect of extreme weather events on climate change attitudes and pro-environmental behaviours. Chapter 3 uses an online ‘message framing’ experiment to explore whether appealing to ‘warm glow’ motives can encourage voluntary pro-environmental behaviour, relative to other common climate change communication strategies. Chapter 4 presents the results of a large-scale field experiment conducted at five university cafeterias, exploring whether carbon footprint labels can promote more sustainable food choices.
... This type of initiative is likely to be implemented soon in Europe, following an European Commission proposal concerning the display of environmental information in food products (European Union 2020). Our results suggest that a five-color label for environmental impact may be more effective than a three-color system, which was tested as an extension of the carbon trust label, a carbon footprint indicator adopted in the United Kingdom (Thøgersen and Nielsen 2016). However, future research is needed to test the joint effect of nutrition and environmental labels displayed simultaneously on the same food product, even if both use a five-color grading system. ...
The adoption of front-of-package (FoP) nutrition labels to promote healthier food choices is increasing worldwide, yet it remains unclear which types of nutrition labels are superior from a public policy perspective. This research compares two common forms of evaluative FoP nutrition labels that vary in the number of colors and corresponding letters they display (three colors, A—C [3C] vs. five colors, A—E [5C]). Four studies, including a field study with vending machines and a study in an experimental supermarket using eye-tracking, show that compared with the 3C label and no label (control) conditions, the 5C label enhances purchase intentions and choices of healthy alternatives. In particular, the 5C nutrition label is superior because it provides more information that helps consumers discriminate the products’ healthiness. This ability to discriminate healthiness modifies consumers’ perceived healthiness of products and influences both their purchase intentions and choice of healthy food options.
... The research conducted by The Carbon Trust (2011a,b) shows that 45% of UK consumers will stop purchasing from enterprises that are reluctant to reveal the carbon footprint of their products. Other researchers have documented consumer preferences for carbon labeling (e.g., Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016) and consumer willingness to pay a price premium for low-carbon products (Liu et al., 2012). In light of these trends, large corporations such as Walmart, Tesco and IBM are now prioritizing the environmental impact of their entire supply chain by assigning more resources to carbon reduction initiatives (Sundarakani et al., 2010). ...
A primary dilemma for multinational firms facing different emissions reduction regulations is determining what to produce in-house and what to outsource. We study a supply chain with manufacturers and overseas suppliers each facing different carbon tax rates. We present an in-house production and outsourcing equilibrium decision model as well as a modified projection algorithm for this supply chain. Numerical examples focus on examining how carbon tax rates and consumer’s carbon awareness affect in-house production and outsourcing decisions. Analysis of the numerical results provides important managerial insights and carbon policy implications which are thoroughly discussed in this paper.
... In some studies, it has been suggested that the result of carbon emissions mapping could be indicated within a carbon label to allow consumers to make more environmentally friendly choices [79]. A few years earlier, [47] already claimed that a CF label is expected to make consumers attend to how their product choices affect GHG emissions and help them to identify low-carbon alternatives. ...
Worldwide the environmental weight of the packaging has overtaken the threshold, both due to the waste and the emissions generated. This issue stimulated the European Union (EU) to provide for a stringent regulation to tackle this burden. Particularly, the consumption of mineral water packed is very significant, as regards the use of plastic bottles, especially in the small size, which stresses the need for a boosted management of packaging by the governments, industries and consumers (Botto et al. in Environ Sci Policy 14:388–395, 2011). Over the years, the EU has shown an increasing consumption of mineral water packed, and Italy, with 222 L per capita is the first European consumer country and the third worldwide. This chapter investigated the glass and Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) packaging to analyse their environmental impact and undertake a comparison among them (Vellini and Savioli in Energy 34:2137–2143, 2009). Particularly the research provides a twofold analysis. Firstly, it assesses the impacts of 1 kg of hollow glass through the Life Cycle Assessment methodology (Schmitz et al. in Energy Policy 39:142–155, 2011;Vinci et al. in Trends in beverage packaging 16:105–133, 2019;) and makes a comparison with a 1 kg of PET ( Marathe KV, Chavan K, Nakhate P (2017) Lifecycle Assessment (LCA) of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) Bottles—Indian Perspective. http://www.in-beverage.org/lca-pet/ICT%20Final%20Report%20on%20LCA%20of%20PET%20Bottles_for%20PACE_01_01_2018.pdf. Accessed 2 March 2021). Secondly, the Greenhouse gas emissions of still water bottled based on the current Italian consumption is evaluated using the Carbon Footprint methodology, to highlight which among the glass and PET mineral water bottles have the better environmental performance (Kouloumpis et al. in Sci Total Environ 727, 2020). Finally, according to the European 2030–2050 climate and energy framework, an improved eco-friendly performance scenario based on post-consumption options for both materials, was investigated regarding the Italian mineral water bottles consumption.
... Various studies have indicated that standardized color coding can improve label effectiveness and efficiency, because laypeople lack the ability to assess raw environmental information (such as the emitted carbon dioxide amount) (Sharp and Wheeler, 2013;Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016;Vlaeminck et al., 2014). Color-coded schemes are usually easily understood at first sight. ...
Consumers' food choices play a crucial role in the shift toward increased sustainability. However, consumers' knowledge about daily food items is not sufficient to evoke environmentally friendly food choices. To facilitate a shift towards more sustainable food consumption, providing understandable information about the environmental impact of products in an easily accessible and effective way seems to be promising. With this outcome in view, we created a new label and tested its effectiveness in improving people's accuracy in evaluating the environmental friendliness of food products. The proposed label is based on life cycle assessment (LCA) and designed to compare food items across food categories through a color-coded scheme. In an online choice task, participants were asked to choose the more environmentally friendly product of two options. Depending on the condition, the products were either labeled or not. As expected, the number of correct choices was significantly higher when the products were labeled (vs. not). Moreover, participants had a positive attitude toward the cross-category label; they evaluated it as comprehensible, credible and useful. The majority of participants indicated that they would be willing to include the label in their shopping decisions, if it were introduced to the market. Altogether, the present research provides evidence that a color-coded sustainability label is suitable for informing consumers about the environmental impact of food products and helps them identify environmentally friendly products.
... Accurate carbon footprint assessment is the prerequisite of low-carbon design. Many governments, organizations, and enterprises have calculated product carbon footprint to formulate many standards [20][21][22] and regulations [23][24][25]. However, no unified method for assessing product carbon footprint has been developed. ...
Greenhouse gas emissions have become one of the most prominent global concerns of sustainable development. To reduce product life cycle carbon footprint, planning should begin at embodiment design phase. The accurate assessment of carbon footprint is the foundation of carbon footprint reduction. However, existing carbon footprint models cannot be applied to embodiment design phase due to incomplete and limited design information. With this in mind, this paper proposes a carbon footprint model for embodiment design based on macro-micro design features. First, a Function-Structure-Feature (FSF) model for embodiment design is established to convey the design information. The concept of design features is introduced (at both macro and micro levels). The macro design feature denotes the different operational states of the product and the constraint relationships between parts. The micro design feature denotes the specific properties of parts. Then, a model of product carbon footprint based on design features is presented through the analysis of the relationships between macro-micro design features and product carbon footprint. The feasibility of the proposed method is demonstrated through a gear hobbing machine. The product carbon footprint model allows quantitative evaluation of product carbon footprint during embodiment design phase, and the amount of carbon footprint from each type of design feature is predicted. Based on evaluation result, the design features can be improved to reduce product carbon footprint. Case study results show that the carbon footprint is decreased by 10.96% after improving design features.
... Previous research has shown the impact of labels' color coding and especially of so-called traffic light color-coding on consumer decisions (e.g. Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016;Tourangeau et al., 2007). This new color classification might also explain why only top-rated appliances benefit from the rescaled label. ...
The European Union has decided to replace its previously existing A+++ to D labelling scheme for cold appliances with a rescaled A to G labelling scheme in 2021. Employing a demographically representative discrete choice experiment on refrigerator adoption using an online survey among more than 1000 households in Germany, this paper explores the effects of the rescaled scheme compared to the previous scheme on the stated uptake of top-rated refrigerators, i.e. those classified A+++ under the previous scheme and B under the rescaled scheme. Since in practice both schemes may be shown for a transitory period, the paper also explores the effects of displaying both labels simultaneously. The findings from estimating a mixed logit model suggest that showing the rescaled label alone significantly increases valuation of top-rated refrigerators compared to showing the previous A+++ to D label alone. In comparison, when the previous A+++ to D and the rescaled A to G schemes are shown simultaneously, no benefits of introducing the rescaled label are found. Thus, policymakers should strive to enforce the application of the rescaled labelling scheme as quickly as possible and to shorten transitory periods where both labels are shown simultaneously.
... A recent body of studies based on surveys and experiments has investigated the willingness of consumers to pay a premium for variants of a product that emit less carbon, all else equal (Akaichi et al., 2020;Canavari and Coderoni, 2020;Elofsson et al., 2016;Feucht and Zander, 2017;Grunert et al., 2015;Lombardi et al., 2017;Peschel et al., 2016;Thøgersen and Nielsen, 2016;Van Loo et al., 2014). Importantly, the existing literature has focused on exploring the willingness to pay for relatively small reductions in carbon emissions within product categories, but has not examined substitution patterns between highemissions products and lower-emissions ones. ...
This study investigates consumer willingness to substitute high-emissions meat products with lower-emissions protein products, including blends of meat and vegetables. Survey data, including a choice experiment, are combined with data on the respondents’ actual purchase behaviour. The traffic light carbon label has an effect on choice behaviour, as it increases the willingness to purchase lower-emissions protein products such as chicken and meat substitutes. We further find that the willingness to purchase these lower-emissions products is largest among individuals who are already purchasing most sustainably. We discuss policy implications from the expected impacts of carbon labels, and how such labels affect different types of consumers.
This article extends the literature on consumers’ responses to green claims and their intentions to buy green products. We used an experimental approach based on three complementary studies. The first compares the effects of two claims regarding different levels of a company’s environmental commitment. The second examines whether consumers can recognize exaggerated claims. The third analyzes consumers’ perceptions of a company’s environmental commitment and intentions to buy the advertised product when an institutional methodology is used to substantiate the message. Surveys were administered online in January 2020 to samples of the Italian population aged 18 to 75. The results suggest that consumers positively perceive the commitment that lies behind all the conditions tested, strongly influencing intentions to buy. However, consumers have either little or no understanding of differences among green claims and are also easily deceived by exaggerated claims (such as “zero impact”). Using multigroup structural equation modeling (SEM), we highlight the important role of education. Consumers with a higher level of education are more receptive to claims that imply a higher commitment and appreciate the presence of an institutional methodology as a credibility signal. However, even highly educated consumers are likely to be deceived by exaggerated claims.
In two experiments replicating an online shopping context, we studied the effectiveness of two traffic‐light carbon labeling systems that differ according to the set of reference with which product comparisons are made. While the inter‐category system allows consumers to compare all food products to each other, the intra‐category system only allows consumers to compare products within the same food category. We also examined whether providing a descriptive social norm cue could increase theirs effects. The impact of the labels was studied on: (1) the frequency of low/medium/high carbon impact products purchased, (2) the carbon footprint of consumers' baskets. Study 1, conducted on university students (n = 228), showed that both carbon labeling systems tested had beneficial effects on consumers' behaviors and carbon footprint. Study 2 (n = 260) on a general population sample, which was less responsive to carbon labels, showed that the addition of a descriptive social norm cue enhanced the labels' effectiveness. Overall, the intra‐category traffic‐light labeling system shifted purchasing the most.
One reason consumers buy unsustainable products is that judging the environmental impact of food choices is very difficult. This study examines whether using carbon footprint labels to convey relevant impact information increases the tendency to choose low-carbon food items. In a pre-registered online experiment, 1,126 participants chose between low-CO2 and high-CO2 products 14 times (e.g., chili sin carne versus chili con carne or margarine versus butter). The two alternatives were either presented without labels (control), with a label communicating the food alternative’s relative sustainability within its food category (traffic light), with a label communicating the absolute carbon emissions in kg CO2 (absolute), or with a label communicating both the relative sustainability and absolute carbon emissions (combined). The results show that the traffic light label and the combined label increased the chance of choosing a low-CO2 (versus a high-CO2) food item. There were no interactions between carbon footprint labels and environmental concern / cognitive reflection. Our research contributes to the discussion on the effectiveness and practical relevance of carbon footprint labels by testing a specific traffic light design and demonstrating the limited impact of communicating absolute carbon emissions.
The carbon-labeling system is able to quantify the level of greenhouse gas emissions of goods throughout their life cycle, including production, delivery, and consumption. With the proposal of carbon peak and carbon neutrality goals, the carbon-labeling system has an inevitable impact on production by companies and the purchase behavior of consumers. This paper constructs a theoretical model of the influencing mechanism on consumer willingness to purchase carbon-labeled products by utilizing the theory of consumption values. Through a survey and analysis of a sample of 347 Chinese university students, a regression analysis is applied to explore their willingness to consume carbon-labeled products and the corresponding influencing factors. The results show that (1) despite relatively low public awareness of the carbon-labeling system, the willingness to purchase carbon-labeled products is strong; (2) functional value, emotional value, and epistemic value can positively influence customer willingness to purchase carbon-labelled products; and (3) there is a significant difference in the willingness to purchase carbon-labelled products in terms of age and no significant difference in terms of gender, income, occupation, and education level. Based on the findings, some recommendations are made to help companies adopt appropriate strategies to trigger consumers’ purchase intentions and gain a market advantage in carbon-labeling scenarios.
With the increasing requirements for environmental protection, authorities have enacted different carbon policies to promote sustainable practices. This study considers the competition among different manufacturers and multiple demand markets in the supply chain network. We examine and compare their equilibrium decision conditions under three common carbon policies: carbon cap, carbon cap‐and‐trade, and carbon tax. Results suggest that under lower carbon caps, manufacturers greatly reduce their carbon emissions by reducing production quantities, which causes a decrease in profits. However, an appropriate carbon cap size can not only motivate manufacturers to reduce carbon emissions but also improve their profits. Under a certain price for carbon credit, the effectiveness of a carbon cap‐and‐trade policy is similar to that of a carbon cap policy, but it has more flexibility. Carbon tax is effective, but it brings more tax burden to manufacturers. We provide implications for companies to optimize their production methods to achieve sustainability.
Seeking a potential of low carbon-based energy use for additive manufacturing, we present a preliminary experimental test using open source IoT tools on FDM (Fused Deposit Modelling) type of 3D printing. In our test we determine and categorize the electricity consumption of processes of a commercial grade FDM printer using a custom-built energy monitor. Our tests indicate that this model of FDM type 3D printer consumes between 22%–33% more energy when printing vertical volumes (Z-axis on 3D printing plate). Based on these tests we present a potential for IoT based low carbon FDM 3D printing using open-source data, hardware and software. With this the article’s contribution is two-fold. One as a study on energy and environmental impact of additive manufacturing and secondly as a potential and scope for IoT applications for facilitating low carbon additive manufacturing.
The purpose of this study was to investigate three attributes of bagged rice products, namely healthiness, quality and carbon footprint reduction and to elicit the willingness to pay for these attributes of bagged rice products of Thai consumers by using unforced choice experiments. A mixed logit model was used to analyse the aggregate sample. Data collection was conducted by an online questionnaire from the sample of consumers aged 20 years and over who had purchased bagged rice. A sample of 420 people living in different regions of Thailand was taken using a multi-stage sampling method. The results showed that all attributes had a significant effect on the purchase of bagged rice of the consumer sample with statistical significance at the level of 0.001. The results also have interesting implications for researchers, entrepreneurs and policymakers.
The promotion of carbon label is important to achieve low-carbon transition and carbon neutrality. However, China's carbon labelling system is at an initial stage and consumers' attitude towards carbon-labelled products is still unknown. This paper seeks to explore consumers' willingness to pay for different types of carbon-labelled products and its influencing factors. To fulfill this goal, we design and conduct a random questionnaire survey in four first-tier cities in China (Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen). The results show that 88.39% of consumers are willing to purchase carbon-labelled products. Consumers' premium willingness to pay for carbon-labelled food, electronic, textile, and other consumer products is 8.43%, 8.5% 7.95%, and 8.33% of the original price, respectively. Besides, respondents with the highest premium willingness to pay are mainly concentrated in the age group of 41–50, or males, or families with underage children. On the basis of the findings, some policy suggestions are proposed to provide references for the promotion and pricing of carbon-labelled products in China and other countries.
We estimate the causal effect of carbon footprint labels on individual food choices and quantify potential carbon emission reductions, using data from a large-scale field experiment at five university cafeterias with over 80,000 individual meal choices. Results show that carbon footprint labels led to a decrease in the probability of selecting a high-carbon footprint meal by approximately 2.7 percentage points with consumers substituting to mid-carbon impact meals. We find no change in the market share of low-carbon meals, on average. The reduction in high-carbon footprint meals is driven by decreases in sales of meat meals while sales of mid-ranged vegan, vegetarian and fish meals all increased. We estimate that the introduction of carbon footprint labels was associated with a 4.3% reduction in average carbon emissions per meal. We contrast our findings with those from nudge-style interventions and discuss the cost-effectiveness of carbon footprint labels. Our results suggest that carbon footprint labels present a viable and low-cost policy tool to address information failure and harness climatarian preferences to encourage more sustainable food choices.
The B Corp certification has emerged as a means to measure the social, environmental and economic impact of companies. The number of certified companies has been growing steadily for the last years, with almost 4000 B Corps at present. Despite this fact, this is an incipient field of research and there are very few studies focused on the B Corp certification process itself. In fact, there are no studies focused on the barriers companies found when pursuing the certification. Thus, in order to cover this gap, it seems necessary to develop new studies based on companies’ own experiences. As there is not a commonly accepted and validated measurement tool (questionnaire) to gather primary data, the objective of this article is to design and propose a questionnaire that collects the motivations, barriers and effects companies experienced during the certification process through a Delphi study. Nine stages are followed from the definition of the research questions and the literature review, to the creation of a final questionnaire. In this study, the panel of experts was integrated by 20 experts and two rounds were conducted. The final questionnaire, named B Corp Certification Process Survey (BCCPS), is made up of 10 motivations, 12 barriers, and 20 effects. Having a common questionnaire allows comparisons and fosters the development of the research field.
Freshwater is crucial for food supply, as irrigation water and as production or incorporated water in industrial production of consumer goods (e.g. food, cosmetics). Manufacturing industries follow different protocols and receive different certifications for water management and efficiency in their plants, which are also labelled on the packaging. Nowadays consumers appear to be increasingly concerned about environmental challenges therefore, many sustainability labels have been developed (Carbon, Water, Ecological Footprint) to facilitate consumers to make more sustainable choices concerning their purchases. Consumers’ behavior towards Carbon Footprint labels has been thoroughly examined in international literature, however WF labelling studies are very limited. The key to water efficiency labelling in consumer products could be the Water Footprint (WF), as it measures the total volume of freshwater used to produce a product, over the full supply chain, including virtual water, “hidden” in the products, services and processes. The implementation of WF labelling of consumer products in Greece was investigated, using a questionnaire with demographical data and statements on water sustainability. The results indicate that younger consumers are not quite aware of environmental challenges related to water. According to the findings, WF could be an effective marketing driver towards water sustainability since consumers prefer a quantified label concerning water consumption, regardless of their educational level, and they are willing to pay an extra price for water sustainable products even if they have an unstable job. Manufacturers could then promote their sustainable profile and performance effectively by adopting a WF relevant labelling.
Carbon labelling systems can inform individual and organizational choices, which potentially reduce the carbon footprints of goods and services. We review the ways labelling is conceptualized and operationalized, and the available evidence on effectiveness. The literature focuses mainly on how labelling affects retail consumer behaviour, but much less on how labelling affects the behaviour of the organizations that produce, transport and sell products despite preliminary research suggesting that the effects on corporate behaviour may be substantial even without strong consumer responses. We consider key challenges for carbon labelling systems related to standard setting, data collection and use, and label design. We summarize the available knowledge, identify key research questions and identify steps towards achieving the promise of carbon labelling.
This study investigates “hypothetical bias,” defined as the difference in the willingness to pay for a product attribute between hypothetical and non-hypothetical conditions in a choice experiment, for the carbon footprint of mandarin oranges in Japan. We conducted the following four treatments: a non-hypothetical lab economic experiment, a hypothetical lab survey, a hypothetical online survey, and a hypothetical online survey with cheap-talk. Each treatment asked participants to choose one of three oranges based on price and carbon emissions level. Next, participants were asked to answer questions on demographics and the following three kinds of environmental factors: environmental consciousness, purchasing behavior for goods with eco-labels, and daily environmental behavior. Using the random parameter logit model, the willingness to pay per 1g of carbon emission reduction were 0.53 JPY, 0.52 JPY, 0.54 JPY, and 0.58 JPY in the non-hypothetical lab economic experiment, hypothetical lab survey, hypothetical online survey and hypothetical online survey with cheap-talk, respectively. The complete combinatorial test of the willingness to pay for carbon emission reductions indicates no hypothetical bias between any treatment combinations. Our findings reveal that environmental attributes for food are less likely to show hypothetical bias than other goods. The results of the main effect with an interaction term show that environmental consciousness reduces the coefficients of carbon emissions in all treatments. Therefore, a psychological scale is useful for showing whether hypothetical bias emerges with treatment or participants’ personal backgrounds.
The chapter discuss carbon neutrality as a marketing tool for brand building, pricing, willingness to pay, and developing new market segments. Carbon neutrality is compared with other greening themes that can be marketed to consumers. Additionally, the chapter focus on final consumers but also on B2B and other possible targets such as access to green public procurement. Then, the chapter discusses in detail different market drivers for companies to move towards lower carbon emissions and carbon neutral process and products. Furthermore, Barriers and risks for suppliers to join the carbon neutral chain have been analysed. Finally, it summarizes the main pathways that companies are taking in terms of marketing, relative to carbon neutrality and what this means in terms of trends in the market.
The first chapter offers an overview of the climate change and carbon neutrality policies of the various countries. A particular focus is dedicated to agri-food policies related to climate change and different mitigation projects developed in the sector.
The ninth chapter explores the role of carbon labels in guiding consumers towards more environmentally friendly and low carbon choices and to inform and educate them about the environmental impact of the food’s life cycle. Particularly, the chapter reviews the main carbon labels and consumers‘perceptions about carbon neutral labels on the shelf and available to consumers. Moreover, the chapter also deals with carbon labels design and how a better design can help communicate environmental and carbon information. Additionally, the role of green marketing and communication has been explored, with a particular focus on how to communicate climate change and climate-related information to consumers. Finally, it explores the role of retailers and Green Public Procurements (GPP) in helping the spreading of these labels and boosts the interest of all the agri-food supply-chain in developing labels able to identify low carbon and carbon neutral products.
Energy efficiency labels have become an important tool in promoting environmentally friendly products. This paper provides insights into how to enhance the impact of energy efficiency labels in middle-income countries. Discrete choice experiments were conducted in Ghana (N = 876) and the Philippines (N = 797), examining whether appealing to attitude functions (the goals served by attitudes) can increase the effectiveness of energy efficiency labels of air conditioners. Local energy efficiency labels were modified to include different functional appeals to the benefits of energy efficiency of an air conditioner. A latent class approach was used to observe heterogeneities among respondents with regard to product attributes and functional appeals. Overall, we find energy efficiency to be an important attribute, which is valued more by people with higher environmental concern and knowledge. In addition, the effect of energy efficiency labelling can be increased by appealing to immediate attitude functions, to social-adjustive benefits (in Ghana) and to the expression of environmental values (in the Philippines). Functional appeals to delayed monetary savings appear to reduce the label’s impact. Results call for using contextually adapted campaigns to maximize the impact of energy efficiency labelling.
Food consumption is one of the major levers of a private household's environmental impact. However, grocery shoppers often lack the time, the involvement, or the necessary knowledge to accurately judge a food product's environmental friendliness. As a result, shoppers either forgo sustainability considerations completely or they rely on heuristic factors, for example the product's origin. In an attempt to empower grocery shoppers to make informed yet time-saving decisions, we explore the introduction of an eco-label to highlight a product's environmental footprint at a glance. We first conduct an online survey to determine the kind of eco-label design that would be the most promising for promoting sales of sustainable and organic food. Second, we conduct an online experiment to test the eco-label's effect on online shoppers' choices across four product categories. We find that the eco-label does indeed have a significant, partly subconscious, effect, particularly if the label has an intuitive, traffic light-colored design. The effect is greatest for low-involvement shoppers, a group that otherwise mainly bases its purchasing decisions on price. Even more promisingly, the greatest reductions are in product choices of the least sustainable product alternatives. In turn, organic food that complies with even stricter (environmental) regulations than those required by organic minimum standards are chosen significantly more often.
Research on heuristics and energy labels shows that the decision context and the meaningfulness of energy information can affect decision-making. In this experiment, we test whether home energy labels that differ in how they present context information about energy savings, and whether those labels include energy cost information that matters to consumers, differ in their ability to influence home buying decisions. A simulated real estate website used by a national sample of U.S. home buyers (N = 1538) shows that energy efficiency labels with more salient context information can more effectively encourage selection of efficient homes. The mock website experimentally tested energy labels with varying levels of context information and employed a disguised discrete choice task as the dependent variable. Using home buyers’ clicking behavior on the mock website, we calculated the likelihood of clicking on efficient listings and willingness to increase purchase price for efficiency. Presenting efficiency as a score along a line provided the most salient context information of all labels. It was also the most effective method of encouraging home buyers to select efficient listings and place a high monetary value on efficiency. Presenting efficiency information for only the most efficient homes (voluntary labelling) reduced the amount of context information available to consumers and was least effective at encouraging selection of efficient homes. Energy cost information in energy labels was only moderately effective in this experiment, possibly because of unintended context effects. Results demonstrate the importance of context information in labels as well as the importance of heuristics such as the anchoring heuristic.
In the recent decades, global climate change has become a world concern in the social-political issue context. Low carbon economy aims at reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by means of technological innovation, development of alternative energy, industrial upgrading etc. Carbon labeling is considered as an effective measure to raise consumers awareness of climate change, to help change their lifestyles and purchasing behaviors, ultimately to promote low carbon economy. This chapter serves as introductory remarks that provide a brief overview of carbon labeling by using a bibliometric analysis, to address the development of carbon labeling, and the issues related to carbon labeling practice.
This volume addresses current concerns about the climate and environmental sustainability by exploring one of the key drivers of contemporary environmental problems: the role of status competition in generating what we consume, and what we throw away, to the detriment of the planet. Across time and space, humans have pursued social status in many different ways - through ritual purity, singing or dancing, child-bearing, bodily deformation, even headhunting. In many of the world's most consumptive societies, however, consumption has become closely tied to how individuals build and communicate status. Given this tight link, people will be reluctant to reduce consumption levels – and environmental impact -- and forego their ability to communicate or improve their social standing. Drawing on cross-cultural and archaeological evidence, this book asks how a stronger understanding of the links between status and consumption across time, space, and culture might bend the curve towards a more sustainable future.
Findings in behavioral science, including psychology, have influenced policies and reforms in many nations. Choice architecture can affect outcomes even if material incentives are not involved. In some contexts, default rules, simplification, and social norms have had even larger effects than significant economic incentives. Psychological research is helping to inform initiatives in savings, finance, highway safety, consumer protection, energy, climate change, obesity, education, poverty, development, crime, corruption, health, and the environment. No nation has yet created a council of psychological advisers, but the role of behavioral research in policy domains is likely to grow in the coming years, especially in light of the mounting interest in promoting ease and simplification (“navigability”); in increasing effectiveness, economic growth, and competitiveness; and in providing low-cost, choice-preserving approaches.
Consumers believe that “eco-labeled” products taste better, which, at least in part, may be an effect of the label. The purpose of the current series of experiments was to examine some mechanisms and limits of this eco-label effect. In Experiment 1, an eco-label effect of similar magnitude was found for taste ratings of both conventional and organic bananas. Experiment 2 showed eco-label effects for a wider range of judgmental dimensions (i.e., health, calories, vitamins/minerals, mental performance, and willingness to pay) and the effect was about the same in magnitude for judgments of grapes and raisins. Experiment 3, with water as the tasted product, found no eco-label effect on judgments of taste, calories and vitamins/minerals, but an effect on willingness to pay, judgments of health and mental performance benefits. Experiments 2 and 3 also included questionnaires on social desirability traits, schizotypal traits and pro-environmental consumer traits. The last was the strongest predictor of the eco-label effect amongst the three. In all, the eco-label effect is a robust phenomenon, but depends on interactions between product type and judgmental dimension. Implications for several accounts of the effect are discussed.
The planetary boundaries framework defines a safe operating space for humanity based on the intrinsic biophysical processes
that regulate the stability of the Earth system. Here, we revise and update the planetary boundary framework, with a focus
on the underpinning biophysical science, based on targeted input from expert research communities and on more general scientific
advances over the past 5 years. Several of the boundaries now have a two-tier approach, reflecting the importance of cross-scale
interactions and the regional-level heterogeneity of the processes that underpin the boundaries. Two core boundaries—climate
change and biosphere integrity—have been identified, each of which has the potential on its own to drive the Earth system
into a new state should they be substantially and persistently transgressed.
This empirical article contributes to the sustainable development debate by examining consumer responses to carbon labels within a real world context. Given the limitations of methodologies that use self-reported or intended measures of purchasing behaviour, we use the loyalty card data of the largest supermarket retailer in the UK to measure the impact of carbon labels on sales by different consumer segments. The data show that the trial of carbon labels on supermarket own brand products has had no discernible impact on shifting demand to lower carbon products. In order to explore possible reasons for lack of impact, nine focus groups were held using purposive sampling by retailer consumer segments to allow an exploration of awareness, understanding and use of carbon labels. The findings from the focus groups identified possible reasons for this lack of impact: lack of awareness and understanding of carbon labelling; constraining or facilitating social and cultural influences; and the heterogeneous nature of consumers. As a result, a number of implications for stakeholders are discussed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
The term 'carbon footprint' has become tremendously popular over the last few years and is now in widespread use across the media – at least in the United Kingdom. With climate change high up on the political and corporate agenda, carbon footprint calculations are in demand. Numerous approaches have been proposed to provide estimates, ranging from basic online calculators to sophisticated life-cycle-analysis or input-output based methods and tools. Despite its ubiquitous use however, there is an apparent lack of academic definitions of what exactly a 'carbon footprint' is meant to be. The scientific literature is surprisingly void of clarifications, despite the fact that countless studies in energy and ecological economics that could have claimed to measure a 'carbon footprint' have been published over decades. This commentary explores the apparent discrepancy between public and academic use of the term 'carbon footprint' and suggests a scientific definition based on commonly accepted accounting principles and modelling approaches. It addresses methodological questions such as system boundaries, completeness, comprehensiveness, units, and robustness of the indicator.
Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself. Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our humanness as a given. They show that by knowing how people think, we can design choice environments that make it easier for people to choose what is best for themselves, their families, and their society. Using colorful examples from the most important aspects of life, Thaler and Sunstein demonstrate how thoughtful "choice architecture" can be established to nudge us in beneficial directions without restricting freedom of choice. Nudge offers a unique new take-from neither the left nor the right-on many hot-button issues, for individuals and governments alike. This is one of the most engaging and provocative books to come along in many years. © 2008 by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein. All rights reserved.
Analyzed the social perception process to determine whether selectivity of available stimuli is based on the informativeness of person attributes, the properties of which are the evaluative extremity (distance from the scale midpoint) and the evaluative valence (positive or negative). In a preliminary scaling study and a main weighting study, 126 undergraduates independently rated the likability of the 16 stimuli persons portrayed on slides. Negativity and extremity were manipulated on the slides across 2 behavioral dimensions: sociability and civic activism. Ss saw 2 prescaled behavior photographs for each stimulus person and controlled a slide changer switch, providing a measure of attention as looking time. Likability ratings provided a measure of relative weight derived from N. H. Anderson's (1968) information integration model. Results show that Ss preferentially weighted behaviors that were extreme or negative, and the behavioral measure of attention (looking time) replicated the predicted pattern. (58 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Stated choice experiments are often used in transportation studies for estimating and forecasting behavior of travelers, road authorities, etc. This kind of experiments rely on underlying experimental designs. Whilst orthogonal designs are mainstream for practitioners, many researchers now realize that so-called efficient designs are able to produce more efficient data in the sense that more reliable parameter estimates can be achieved with an equal or lower sample size. This paper describes several processes for generating stated choice experiments and is intended to give an overview of the current state-of-the-art. Different methods are described.
The aim of this study was to review research conducted in 2003–2006 in the EU-15 countries on how consumers perceive, understand,
like and use nutrition information on food labels. Based on a search of databases on academic publications, Google-based search,
and enquiries directed to a range of food retailers, food companies, consumer associations and government agencies, a total
of 58 studies were identified. These studies were summarised using a standard format guided by a model of consumer information
processing, and these summaries were subsequently processed using the MAXqda software in order to identify key findings and
common themes across the studies. The studies show widespread consumer interest in nutrition information on food packages,
though this interest varies across situations and products. Consumers like the idea of simplified front of pack information
but differ in their liking for the various formats. Differences can be related to conflicting preferences for ease of use,
being fully informed and not being pressurised into behaving in a particular way. Most consumers understand the most common
signposting formats in the sense that they themselves believe that they understand them and they can replay key information
presented to them in an experimental situation. There is, however, virtually no insight into how labelling information is,
or will be, used in a real-world shopping situation, and how it will affect consumers’ dietary patterns. Results are largely
in line with an earlier review by Cowburn and Stockley (Public Health Nutr 8:21–28, 2005), covering research up to 2002, but
provide new insights into consumer liking and understanding of simplified front of pack signposting formats. There is an urgent
need for more research studying consumer use of nutritional information on food labels in a real-world setting.
Thirty-seven products were labelled to indicate embodied carbon emissions, and sales were recorded over a 3-month period. Green (below average), yellow (near average), and black (above average) footprints indicated carbon emissions embodied in groceries. The overall change in purchasing pattern was small, with black-labelled sales decreasing 6% and green-labelled sales increasing 4% after labelling. However, when green-labelled products were also the cheapest, the shift was more substantial, with a 20% switch from black- to green-label sales. These findings illustrate the potential for labelling to stimulate reductions in carbon emissions.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to develop and apply a framework for understanding consumer responses to ecolabelling.
Design/methodology/approach
From a consumer perspective, ecolabels are tools for supporting decision making with regard to environmentally significant products. The paper proposes an adoption of innovation framework for understanding consumer responses. The framework is applied in a mall‐intercept survey of the early adoption of a new ecolabel, the MSC label for sustainable fishery, in Denmark.
Findings
Early adopters of a new ecolabel mostly employ a high effort adoption process. Starting the adoption process depends on both motivation (intention to buy sustainable fish products) and ability (issue‐relevant knowledge). Whether and how quickly the consumer completes the adoption depends on his or her motivation, past experience with using ecolabels, and trust in the endorsing organisation.
Research limitations/implications
Environmental and product‐related factors did not differ between respondents. Hence, a complete account of the importance of these factors for the adoption and (especially) diffusion of the label is not provided.
Practical implications
Consumers scoring highly on both issue‐relevant knowledge and motivation are the most likely innovators and early adopters. Their high level of expertise means that they do not need a lot of explanation for understanding the label and its self‐relevance and their strong motivation means that they will search for more if they need it (and if it is not too difficult to get).
Originality/value
The paper makes both a conceptual and an empirical contribution, which are of value both to practitioners (ecolabel promoters and users) and to research on ecolabel effectiveness.
Negative information tends to influence evaluations more strongly than comparably extreme positive information. To test whether this negativity bias operates at the evaluative categorization stage, the authors recorded event-related brain potentials (ERPs), which are more sensitive to the evaluative categorization than the response output stage, as participants viewed positive, negative, and neutral pictures. Results revealed larger amplitude late positive brain potentials during the evaluative categorization of (a) positive and negative stimuli as compared with neutral stimuli and (b) negative as compared with positive stimuli, even though both were equally probable, evaluatively extreme, and arousing. These results provide support for the hypothesis that the negativity bias in affective processing occurs as early as the initial categorization into valence classes.
Ethical labels signal positive ethical quality of a product but fail to create massive demand for such products. Based on regulatory focus theory and prospect theory, it is argued that negative signalling of low ethical quality would have a stronger effect on the adoption of ethical products than the current positive signalling of high ethical quality. The effect of positive versus negative signalling of high versus low ethical quality on attitude and preference formation is tested in three experimental studies (N=81; N=170; N=177). Results show (1) that negative labelling has more effect on attitude and preference than positive labelling, (2) that the effect of labelling is enhanced by regulatory fit, and (3) that the effect of labelling is mediated by personal norms. No evidence of either mediation or moderation by environmental concern was found.
Information has not been proven a very successful means to promote voluntary behaviour change to protect the environment. On this backcloth, there is currently increasing interest in recommendations from behavioural economics focusing on making the choice architecture more facilitating for the desired behaviour. The authors present three studies demonstrating how mental shortcuts, based on subtle cues in the context, unconsciously influence human decision-making, with important consequences for the environment. Two of our own studies illustrate the behavioural impacts of (a) anchoring (the design of the European energy label) and (b) default effect (the framing of a request to participate in the Smart Grid), and data from Göckeritz et al. (Eur J Soc Psych 40:514-523, 2010) are used to illustrate the impacts of (c) herding or descriptive norms (the social context of energy saving). The authors end by pointing at theoretical weaknesses in behavioural economics and calling for research to strengthening the theoretical underpinnings of this approach to behaviour change.
This study evaluates young consumers' attitudes to sustainable food and analyzes the determinants of their willingness to pay (WTP) for chocolate bars with different sustainability labels. Data were collected through experimental auctions in Italy assessing respondents' (N = 80, aged between 18 and 35) WTP for chocolate bars with three selected labels (i.e. Fair Trade, Rainforest Alliance and Carbon Footprint). Econometric outcomes reveal that several socio-demographic factors exert a positive and statistically significant effect on WTP for all the selected chocolate bars, namely age cohort (older), gender (female) and household income (high). Respondents' lifestyles and food consumption habits also had an effect on final bids. This study offers valuable insights to policy makers and practitioners for efficiently targeting young consumers in campaigns to increase sustainability-labelled food consumption.
Using an incentive-compatible framed field experiment, we investigate whether consumers' food consumption is more eco-friendly when the information about a product's environmental impact is more easily accessible. Through an online survey, we identify a food label that is perceived to be the most easily accessible for assessing a product's eco-friendliness among six alternatives. These alternatives vary on multiple dimensions, including whether a standardized score of the overall environmental impact is added. This new food label is subsequently tested in an experimental food market embedded in a Belgian supermarket. We find that the presence of the new label that was preselected in the online survey leads to more eco-friendly food consumption relative to either the label currently used in the supermarket, or the label that contains the raw information of the environmental impact. In our experimental food market, the use of an easy-to-interpret but comprehensive environmental information label increases the overall eco-friendliness of our subjects' food consumption by about 5.3% relative to the default label used in current markets.
Preface 1. In the beginning 2. Basic notations of statistics 3. Choosing 4. Paradigms of choice data 5. Processes in setting up stated choice experiments 6. Choices in data collection 7. Nlogit for applied choice analysis: a primer 8. Handling choice data 9. Case study: model choice data 10. Getting started modelling: the workhorse - MNL 11. Getting more from your model 12. Practical issues in the application of choice models 13. Allowing for similarity of alternatives 14. Nested logit estimation 15. The mixed logit model 16. Mixed logit estimation Nlogit terms and commands References Index.
One of the techniques marketers use to convert low-involvement products into high-involvement ones is adding an important product feature. A case in point is the common practice of adding a “green” or environmentally friendly product feature to an everyday product, something which is often assumed to elevate consumer involvement in the choice of the product. However, there is a lack of research investigating whether adding such a “green” product attribute actually makes any difference to how consumers make choices. Does the way in which consumers make decisions about groceries change when both “green” and conventional alternatives are available? Does it make them deliberate more or do they just develop another, simple choice heuristic? Based on observation and follow-up interviews of consumers at the milk counter in two supermarkets which stock both organic (a “green” attribute) and conventional milk, it is concluded that, rather than changing the way consumers make decisions when buying this type of product, the availability of a “green” alternative seems to make “green” consumers develop a new, simple choice heuristic that allows them to do their shopping as effortless and time-efficient as consumers buying conventional products.
Given the rapid increase of web-based sales, e-services (both pure-online and hybrid "clicks and mortar" market plays) are faced with a difficult challenge: What value-added features should they offer to effectively gain market share and profits while realistically considering operational and financial constraints embedded in a perfect market paradigm? This article explores similarities and differences in customer values and switching inertia between different customer segments for e-financial services in the United States. Through a national online customer choice experiment with 2200 onlinecustomers, the authors found that customer values differ widely across segments and online features (such as availability of traditional data-quoting and buy/sell decision support services price, access to a brick-and-mortar retail outlet, and various formats of online accessibility). The results of this study have both managerial and research implications for design and operations strategy development for e-services in other industries as well.
Over the past several years, labeling schemes that focus on a wide range of environmental and social metrics have proliferated. Although little empirical evidence has been generated with respect to carbon footprint labels, much can be learned from our experience with similar product labels. We first review the theory and evidence on the influence of product labeling on consumer and firm behavior. Next, we consider the role of governments and nongovernmental organizations, concluding that global, multistakeholder organizations have a critical part to play in setting protocols and standards. We argue that it is important to consider the entire life cycle of a product being labeled and develop an international standard for measurement and reporting. Finally, we examine the potential impact of carbon product labeling, discussing methodological and trade challenges and proposing a framework for choosing products best suited for labeling.
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A study of 930 hotel guests found relatively high acceptance of certain security measures, along with a willingness to pay extra for some of them. In particular, respondents were favorable to security cameras and requiring photo identification, and they would support having a first-aid kit in every hotel room. Study participants were mixed on more intrusive security efforts, such as metal detectors, visible security guards, and background checks of guests to see whether they have police records. Respondents younger than forty were both more likely to accept stringent security measures and more willing to pay for them. Women were also more supportive of strong security measures than were men, particularly men who are frequent travelers.
Stated-preference methods are a class of evaluation techniques for studying the preferences of patients and other stakeholders. While these methods span a variety of techniques, conjoint-analysis methods-and particularly discrete-choice experiments (DCEs)-have become the most frequently applied approach in health care in recent years. Experimental design is an important stage in the development of such methods, but establishing a consensus on standards is hampered by lack of understanding of available techniques and software. This report builds on the previous ISPOR Conjoint Analysis Task Force Report: Conjoint Analysis Applications in Health-A Checklist: A Report of the ISPOR Good Research Practices for Conjoint Analysis Task Force. This report aims to assist researchers specifically in evaluating alternative approaches to experimental design, a difficult and important element of successful DCEs. While this report does not endorse any specific approach, it does provide a guide for choosing an approach that is appropriate for a particular study. In particular, it provides an overview of the role of experimental designs for the successful implementation of the DCE approach in health care studies, and it provides researchers with an introduction to constructing experimental designs on the basis of study objectives and the statistical model researchers have selected for the study. The report outlines the theoretical requirements for designs that identify choice-model preference parameters and summarizes and compares a number of available approaches for constructing experimental designs. The task-force leadership group met via bimonthly teleconferences and in person at ISPOR meetings in the United States and Europe. An international group of experimental-design experts was consulted during this process to discuss existing approaches for experimental design and to review the task force's draft reports. In addition, ISPOR members contributed to developing a consensus report by submitting written comments during the review process and oral comments during two forum presentations at the ISPOR 16th and 17th Annual International Meetings held in Baltimore (2011) and Washington, DC (2012).
A survey of 858 Belgians (615 people drawn from the general public and 243 visitors to Oxfam World Shops), examined the knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and behaviour of consumers with respect to fair-trade issues. The results showed that the respondents' knowledge and attitudes generally supported the fair-trade concept. However, many of the people questioned believed that fair-trade organizations should provide more and better information on fair-trade products, especially in shops and on the items themselves. In addition, fair-trade products should be more readily available in regular supermarkets, and their price should be lowered. The most interesting socio-demographic target group for non-profit fair-trade organizations appears to be older people with higher education and income. Consumers from the south (French-speaking) part of Belgium in general have a more positive attitude towards fair trade.
Copyright
In January 2007, Sir Terry Leahy, Chief Executive of Tesco, made a surprise announcement: Tesco intend to put carbon labels on all their products. The hope is that consumers will be able to judge the impact on the environment of what they buy. But Tesco stock 70 000 products. Can it be done? And, if so, how?Brenda Boardman looks at the challenges.
Products with a superior environmental performance, such as a high level of energy efficiency, are typically subject to information asymmetries. Therefore these product attributes are often undervalued in purchase decisions. Signaling, e.g. energy labeling, can overcome these asymmetries, with positive implications for effective consumer decisions, competitive advantage for suppliers of energy-efficient goods, and for societal goals such as mitigating climate change. However, there is a scarcity of research investigating how energy labels actually influence consumer choice. The recent revision of the European Union energy label provided a unique opportunity to investigate the effectiveness of energy labeling in a quasi field-experimental setting. We show that the proposed extension of the seven-point A–G rating scale by adding new classes A+, A++, etc. will result in a lower perceived importance of energy efficiency in consumer decision-making. Based on a stated preference survey investigating 2244 choices by German consumers, we conclude that the revision actually undermines the label's ability to overcome information asymmetries, hence potentially contributing to market failure. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Green marketing subsumes greening products as well as greening firms. In addition to manipulating the 4Ps (product, price, place and promotion) of the traditional marketing mix, it requires a careful understanding of public policy processes. This paper focuses primarily on promoting products by employing claims about their environmental attributes or about firms that manufacture and/or sell them. Secondarily, it focuses on product and pricing issues. Drawing on multiple literatures, it examines issues such as what needs to be greened (products, systems or processes), why consumers purchase/do not purchase green products and how firms should think about information disclosure strategies on environmental claims. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.
Environmental labels are useful from an environmental policy perspective only if they are noticed by the consumer in the shopping situation and next – what is more – understood, trusted, and valued as a tool for decision-making. In this paper, a psychological model explaining variations in consumer attention towards environmental labels is developed and its ability to predict attention towards environmental labels in various European countries is tested.
Current studies on eco-labeling have been limited because they either examine the relationship between individual characteristics and eco-behavior or between label characteristics and eco-behavior. We extend this literature by designing and testing a model that explicitly links how the characteristics of the individual and the information simultaneously influence an information program’s success. The specific application studies the potential effects of providing eco-information in the private market for passenger vehicles and light-duty trucks sold in the United States. The results point toward the importance of well-designed labeling practices as they significantly impact individuals’ perceptions of the eco-friendliness of products. Further, the importance of underlying psychological factors; and individuals’ priors of the product and of the environmental problem suggests a strong role for the long-run provision of eco-information, especially in cases where individuals hold incorrect perceptions.
Despite the increased popularity of conjoint analysis in health outcomes research, little is known about what specific methods are being used for the design and reporting of these studies. This variation in method type and reporting quality sometimes makes it difficult to assess substantive findings. This review identifies and describes recent applications of conjoint analysis based on a systematic review of conjoint analysis in the health literature. We focus on significant unanswered questions for which there is neither compelling empirical evidence nor agreement among researchers.
We searched multiple electronic databases to identify English-language articles of conjoint analysis applications in human health studies published since 2005 through to July 2008. Two independent reviewers completed the detailed data extraction, including descriptive information, methodological details on survey type, experimental design, survey format, attributes and levels, sample size, number of conjoint scenarios per respondent, and analysis methods. Review articles and methods studies were excluded. The detailed extraction form was piloted to identify key elements to be included in the database using a standardized taxonomy.
We identified 79 conjoint analysis articles that met the inclusion criteria. The number of applied studies increased substantially over time in a broad range of clinical applications, cancer being the most frequent. Most used a discrete-choice survey format (71%), with the number of attributes ranging from 3 to 16. Most surveys included 6 attributes, and 73% presented 7–15 scenarios to each respondent. Sample size varied substantially (minimum = 13, maximum = 1258), with most studies (38%) including between 100 and 300 respondents. Cost was included as an attribute to estimate willingness to pay in approximately 40% of the articles across all years.
Conjoint analysis in health has expanded to include a broad range of applications and methodological approaches. Although we found substantial variation in methods, terminology, and presentation of findings, our observations on sample size, the number of attributes, and number of scenarios presented to respondents should be helpful in guiding researchers when planning a new conjoint analysis study in health.
Public perceptions of a UK carbon labelling trial were assessed via three focus groups. The public found it very difficult to make sense of labelled emissions values without additional information. There was also little evidence of a willingness to use labels for product selection. There is a strong case for using carbon reduction labels to indicate a programme of on-going emissions reductions, rather than expecting consumers to incentivise emissions reductions by actively choosing the lower carbon variant of two or more products. The normalisation issues and emissions reduction potential of carbon labelling are discussed.
Food consumption is associated with various environmental impacts, and consumers' food choices therefore represent important environmental decisions. In a large-scale survey, we examined consumers' beliefs about ecological food consumption and their willingness to adopt such behaviors. Additionally, we investigated in more detail how different motives and food-related attitudes influenced consumers' willingness to reduce meat consumption and to buy seasonal fruits and vegetables. We found consumers believed avoiding excessive packaging had the strongest impact on the environment, whereas they rated purchasing organic food and reducing meat consumption as least environmentally beneficial. Similarly, respondents appeared to be most unwilling to reduce meat consumption and purchase organic food. Taste and environmental motives influenced consumers' willingness to eat seasonal fruits and vegetables, whereas preparedness to reduce meat consumption was influenced by health and ethical motives. Women and respondents who preferred natural foods were more willing to adopt ecological food consumption patterns.
This article discusses the carbon accounting and carbon-labelling schemes being developed to address growing concerns over climate change. Its particular concern is their impact on small stakeholders, especially low-income countries. The popular belief that trade is by definition problematic is not true; carbon efficiencies elsewhere in the supply chain may more than offset emissions from transportation. Indeed, low-income countries may offer important opportunities for carbon emission reductions because of their favourable climatic conditions and use of low energy-intensive production techniques. However, their effective inclusion in labelling schemes will require innovative solutions to provide low-cost data collection and certification. Copyright (c) The Authors 2009. Journal compilation (c) 2009 Overseas Development Institute..
We aimed to explore the interactive effects of the accessibility of information and the degree of carbon footprint score on consumers' value judgments of food products. Participants (n=151, undergraduate students in Japan) rated their maximum willingness to pay (WTP) for four food products varying in information accessibility (active-search or read-only conditions) and in carbon footprint values (low, middle, high, or non-display) provided. We also assessed further effects of information accessibly and carbon footprint value on other product attributes utilizing the subjective estimation of taste, quality, healthiness, and environmental friendliness. Results of the experiment demonstrated an interactive effect of information accessibility and the degree of carbon emission on consumer valuation of carbon footprint-labeled food. The carbon footprint value had a stronger impact on participants' WTP in the active-search condition than in the read-only condition. Similar to WTP, the results of the subjective ratings for product qualities also exhibited an interactive effect of the two factors on the rating of environmental friendliness for products. These results imply that the perceived environmental friendliness inferable from a carbon footprint label contributes to creating value for a food product.