Effects of shared characteristics between eco‐labels: A case for organic and local food

Abstract

Food labels are created to reduce information asymmetry and help consumers make better food choices. However, the labels may have unanticipated effects, especially when they share common characteristics that may introduce confusion in making food choices. This study investigates how perceived relationships between different food labels may affect the price premiums of organic and local attributes for milk and fresh strawberries. Results show that the impacts of perception vary by product and label, and different food labels could positively affect price premiums on organic and local products. Results provide policy implications for better labeling and educational programs to reduce inadvertent confusion and improve consumer decision‐making.

Big business returns on B Corp? Growing with green & lean as any label is a good label

“…Certain facets of CBFLE have also been examined in the literature, most commonly consumers' awareness, understanding, and trust (Chen et al, 2015;Feucht & Zander, 2014;Grunert et al, 2014). Furthermore, Sigurdsson et al (2022) examined how familiarity with a food label mediates the effect of the label on WTP, and Donato and Adigüzel (2022) studied how label design affects consumers' evaluations of sustainable products.…”

Are people's daily life habits consistent with their preference for food sustainability labels?

“…Despite the debates on the validity of using this method, a meta‐analysis of different practices of eliciting consumers' MWTP finds that direct measurement methods such as CVM are less likely to overestimate consumers' MWTP than other indirect measurements, such as choice experiments (Schmidt & Bijmolt, 2020). The payment card method is one of the prevalent CVMs to evaluate consumers' MWTP in the literature (Chen et al, 2023; Yang et al, 2013; Yu et al, 2014). The payment card method asks respondents to choose a number or an interval from a list of given values.…”

Modelling the antecedents of consumers' willingness to pay for eco‐labelled food products

“…However, general awareness of eco‐labels is not quite adequate to drive eco‐label uptake, instead past research has shown that specific awareness, which includes the ability to recognize and recall labels and understand their benefits (Henninger, 2015; Taufique et al, 2019; Thøgersen, 2000) is crucial for consumers to adopt them. In terms of food eco‐labels, while they do follow specific regulations and serve specific purposes, they often share common characteristics and communicate complex multifaced information (Chen et al, 2022). For example, organic, local, and green food labels all signify pro‐environmental practices in the production process, which is a shared overarching characteristic, however, local food also showcases carbon miles, whilst organic food labels certify no use of chemicals or genetic techniques in farming, and green food labels signify no use of toxic and environmental pollutants during the production process (Moruzzo et al, 2020; Eco‐label Index, 2022).…”

“…The complex information is hard to process easily by the consumers who are using eco-labels as clues and signals of trust to reduce the information search and information processing time while making purchase decisions. Thus, overlapping characteristics and a lack of clarity and multiplicity of information may cause ambiguity and misunderstanding among consumers about what eco-labels' signal and what their benefits are (Hu et al, 2012;Syrengelas et al, 2018) and thus, lead to ineffective and inefficient use by consumers (Chen et al, 2022). This could imply that consumers may single out one characteristic or benefit they associate with eco-labels in general when making a purchase decision, rather than reflecting on all and/or specific characteristics of individual labels.…”