Consumer Preferences for Different Designs of Carbon Footprint Labelling on Tomatoes in Germany—Does Design Matter?

Stephan G.H. Meyerding, Anna-Lena Schaffmann and Mira Lehberger
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Stephan G.H. Meyerding: Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany
Anna-Lena Schaffmann: Faculty of Economic Sciences, Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, 37073 Göttingen, Germany

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 6, 1-30

Abstract: The climate impact of tomato production is an important issue in the sustainability of tomatoes, especially in northern European countries, such as Germany. Communicating the climate impact of products to the consumer is difficult and the design of the label might be the key to its success. For this reason, the present study compares the utilities of six different carbon footprint labels to evaluate which label design works best for the consumer. 598 consumers were surveyed in a representative online choice-experiment. The participants had to choose between tomatoes with different product characteristics, such as origin, price, organic label, and carbon footprint label. A split sample approach was used where each sub-sample with around n = 100 saw a different carbon footprint label design in the choice-experiment. The results suggest that qualitative carbon footprint labels using color-coded traffic light labelling are superior to those that claim climate impact reduction or neutrality, including those that provide more details regarding the climate impact of the product and the company. The latent class analysis with four consumer segments shows that a significant proportion of consumers in Germany would consider a carbon footprint label as an important characteristic.

Keywords: product carbon footprint label; marketing; consumer preferences; choice-based con-joint analysis; latent class analysis (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

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