Biogas digestate management: Evaluating the attitudes and perceptions of German gardeners towards digestate-based soil amendments

Johannes Dahlin, Michael Nelles and Carsten Herbes

Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 2017, vol. 118, issue C, 27-38

Abstract: Managing the excessive nutrient surplus in the vicinity of many biogas plants presents an ever-increasing challenge. By opening additional markets for digestate products, plant operators can create alternative routes for their digestate streams and so lessen the economic burdens arising from digestate disposal. A relatively new and promising market is the private garden sector where small quantities of digestate-based products have already been sold with little marketing effort. This niche sector has the potential to develop into something much larger, but to do so, marketers must understand the consumer base. Guided by the consumer decision process model, we found through interviews with private gardeners from southern Germany that consumers’ perceptions of value and risk in purchasing soil amendments often rely on credence attributes, making packaging and trust factors paramount in successful marketing of these products. A joint effort from key stakeholders based on these insights could lead to successful integration of digestate-based products into the mass marketplace, thereby helping both to preserve finite resources and to foster the long-term viability of biogas as a renewable energy source.

Keywords: Biogas digestate marketing; Private gardeners; Compost; Fertilizer; Credence good (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344916303573
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:recore:v:118:y:2017:i:c:p:27-38

DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2016.11.020

Access Statistics for this article

Resources, Conservation & Recycling is currently edited by Ming Xu

More articles in Resources, Conservation & Recycling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kai Meng ().