Caveat emptor - let the buyer beware! environmental labelling and the limitations of ‘green’ consumerism

Abstract

In recent years, the idea of 'green' or 'political' consumers expressing their political beliefs in everyday life has been widely embraced. Eager to satisfy the needs of this new market segment, firms have allocated substantial resources to environmental management, social accountability, corporate citizenship, occupational health and safety etc. During the 1990s, the industrialized world also witnessed a growing number of environmental labels, expected to guide the political consumers in their shopping decisions. Evaluations of these environmental labelling (eco-labelling) programmes indicate that some labels and product groups receive a great deal of attention while others remain in obscurity. To understand these differences, the paper will discuss some of the factors that determine the market impact of environmental labelling. It is concluded that the concept of the 'green' consumer is over-simplified and fails to capture the actual complexity of consumer values, attitudes and behaviour. The results are based on existing literature and our own empirical findings. Copyright

The Well(s) of Knowledge: The Decoding of Sustainability Claims in the UK and in Greece

“…However, after exploring consumers' perceptions of different types of labelling and their knowledge it became apparent that environmental knowledge alone is not enough to enable consumers to understand the "labelling-scape". This corresponds with previous studies that stressed the weakness of the link between environmental knowledge and behaviour [42,50]. This research found that consumers decode various sustainability claims through environmental knowledge (abstract and concrete), political, branding, and labelling knowledge.…”

“…In the marketing literature knowledge of labels has received attention [5,[49][50][51]. Past research suggested that consumers prefer products that have a familiar seal on their packaging [52].…”

“…Thøgersen [49] agrees with previous findings and proposes a vicious circle, as knowing a label is a prerequisite for using it in a decision-making process, however in order to gain benefits from the label and use it correctly, a prerequisite is that the individual knows the meaning of the label. D'Souza et al [51] and Pederson and Neergaard [50] found that this vicious circle continues as consumers lack knowledge of the types of labelling procedure adopted by organisations. In their study, D'Souza et al [53] also found that consumers appear to have poor knowledge regarding labels and label types.…”

Consumers and their behavior: state of the art in behavioral science supporting use phase modeling in LCA and ecodesign

“…The use of such heuristics is particularly important when understanding how users react to information on the energy consumption and environmental impact of a product. This might well explain why in the field of sustainable consumption attempts to increase consumer knowledge through provision of information have shown little impact on behavior (Davies et al 2002;Gardner and Stern 2002;Pedersen and Neergaard 2006;Moisander 2007). Moreover, if products differ on several dimensions such as energy efficiency, pollution, durability, and price, it is unlikely that the decision maker will integrate all of these into his choice.…”

Perceptions Held by Finnish Energy Sector Experts Regarding Public Attitudes to Energy Issues

“…Publicly available information on energy issues is reported as being in surprisingly short supply and some of it is conflicting (Brand, 1997;Blowfield et al, 2001;Kuisma, 2001;Lybäck, 2002;Neergaard & Pedersen, 2006). For many people, energy saving automatically conjures up the idea of fewer comforts and a lower quality of life (Aho et al, 2006).…”