How to stimulate environmentally friendly consumption: Evidence from a nationwide social experiment in Japan to promote eco-friendly coffee

Ryo Takahashi

Ecological Economics, 2021, vol. 186, issue C

Abstract: We investigate the effect of information provision about environmentally friendly coffee on consumers' purchasing behaviors. We use a dataset from a nationwide social experiment in Japan involving over 10,000 vending machines serving brewed coffee. We also provide empirical insights into the potential drivers affecting pro-environmental behavior of consumers through information provision. Our results demonstrate that informing consumers about the product's eco-friendliness significantly increases eco-friendly coffee sales (+7%) only in social spaces (e.g., office buildings) and not in non-social spaces (e.g., shopping malls). Consumers in social spaces might be motivated to purchase eco-friendly coffee to build a “green” reputation among community members after receiving such information.

Keywords: Information provision; Social experiment; Sustainability labels; Coffee certification; Green reputation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 G14 M31 O13 Q13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800921001403
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:186:y:2021:i:c:s0921800921001403

DOI: 10.1016/j.ecolecon.2021.107082

Access Statistics for this article

Ecological Economics is currently edited by C. J. Cleveland

More articles in Ecological Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().