Knowledge and understanding of sustainability labels in Brazil

Abstract

The introduction of sustainability labels on packaging demands large efforts from companies that expect economic or moral rewards when labelling their products. However, consumers still struggle to incorporate sustainability labels into purchasing decisions. Therefore, we focus on investigating the relationship between sustainable behaviour and the level of knowledge and understanding consumers have about different types of labels and claims. We visited 408 households in different Brazilian regions. Participants were able to manually inspect four products and point out the sustainability labels they found on packaging and their meanings. Factor analysis followed by a twostage cluster analysis identified the existence of three clusters. Consumers have little knowledge and understanding of labels, but more sustainable consumers have a higher level of knowledge and understanding. Their main mistakes were the misunderstanding of labels' meaning and confusion between claims and sustainability labels. Implications for policymakers and companies are presented.

Achieving sustainable development with sustainable packaging: A natural‐resource‐based view perspective

“…Literature findings reveal that consumers' perceptions and behaviours towards sustainable packaging are influenced by both intrinsic and external factors. Intrinsic factors include customers' sustainable lifestyle (Su et al, 2021), green knowledge and awareness (Hamza et al, 2018; Mehraj & Qureshi, 2022; Pawaskar et al, 2018) and environmental attitudes (Ahmed et al, 2023; Moorthy et al, 2021; Popovic et al, 2020; Prakash & Pathak, 2017; Wahab et al, 2021; Yarimoglu & Binboga, 2019), while external factors comprise packaging visual design cues (Liem et al, 2022; Lisboa et al, 2022; Magnier & Schoormans, 2015; Steenis et al, 2017) and retailers' sustainable marketing strategies such as price and promotion (Ahmed et al, 2023).…”