Sustainability Labels on Olive Oil: A Review on Consumer Attitudes and Behavior

Abstract

Product labeling is a way to inform consumers and increase their awareness about sustainability attributes of products. It guarantees the use of specific production conditions, promotes market incentives and highlights environmental, social and/or ethical product attributes. This study provides a literature review of sustainability labels on olive oil including consumer attitudes and behavior towards this product. Results show that consumers have positive attitudes towards olive oil carrying sustainability labels and are willing to pay more for olive oil carrying those labels. However, the major drivers of this behavior are far from being related to sustainability. This insight jeopardizes the main objective of those labels and suggests more clarifications about the information delivered by them. More in-depth investigations are needed about the drivers of consumer behavior towards olive oil carrying sustainability labels.

Consumer Preferences for Olive Oil in Spain: A Best-Worst Scaling Approach

“…They concluded that consumers perceived a disutility from the organic attribute, as they are unwilling to pay a price premium for a healthy product per se. Similarly, the findings of [8,59,60] pointed out that in Spain the efficacy of eco-labels is not entirely guaranteed, and consumers doubt the credibility of the information provided by marketers. On the contrary, the findings of Aprile et al [61] concluded that respondents are willing to pay a high price for the organic label, following the PDO label.…”

“…The former was defined as those that cannot be changed or manipulated without simultaneously modifying the physical characteristics of the olive oil, including its taste, colour, and flavour. Extrinsic attributes are related to the product but are not part of the physical product, such as brand and price [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11]. Alternatively, they can be classified into search attributes, which refer to visual attributes that can be assessed prior to purchase (e.g., packaging, colour, and price), experience attributes, which can only be assessed after consuming the product (e.g., taste, smell, flavour), and credence attributes, which unlike search and experience attributes, are product quality characteristics that cannot be ascertained through direct experience (e.g., production method, geographical origin, health-related attributes, and processing techniques).…”

Preferences for dietary oils and fats in cooking and food preparation methods: a cross-sectional analysis of Australian adults

“…Our findings are in contrast to those previously reported by Erraach et al (63) and Santosa et al (47) who identified that cost was one of the main determining factors in participants' decisions to purchase olive oil in n 439 adult consumers of olive oil (52•5 % female; 47•5 % male) in Spain and n 35 adults (82•9 % female; 17•1 % male) in the USA, respectively. However, more recent findings suggest that when choosing a household oil, factors, including sustainability, are more considered than the cost of olive oil (64) . In contrast to these findings, supporting local production of oils and environmental sustainability were not as frequently reported in the present study.…”

Analyzing consumer willingness to pay for organic extra virgin olive oil: A logit model approach

“…In this context, several studies have emphasized that customers are prepared to pay a higher price for the significance of the organic features of EVOO and the higher healthiness of the product [46] 4 ( see the meta-analysis of Del Giudice, et al for more detail) [47]. Olive oil is a complex product and opinions about its quality depend on extern al as well as internal factors [48,49]. Indeed, Caracciolo, et al [50] stated that EVOO's bitterness had a detrimental effect on customers' WTP.…”