Red, yellow, or green? Do consumers’ choices of food products depend on the label design?

Fredrik Carlsson, Mitesh Kataria, Elina Lampi, Erik Nyberg and Thomas Sterner

European Review of Agricultural Economics, 2022, vol. 49, issue 5, 1005-1026

Abstract: Using a stated preference survey, we investigate to what extent consumers are willing to make costlier food consumption choices to decrease damages to health, the environment, and animal well-being. In particular, we investigate how the graphic design of the labels affects choice behaviour by comparing traffic–light and greyscale labels and plain-text description with each other. We found that the red colour in traffic lights seems to strengthen respondents’ preferences for avoiding the worst level of a collective attribute such as climate impact or antibiotics use, while the green colour strengthened preferences for the more private attribute, namely healthiness. On average, the price premiums for a green label compared with a red label is 52 per cent for healthiness, 64 per cent for both animal welfare and antibiotics, and 20 per cent for climate impact.

Keywords: food labels; choice experiment; norms; food choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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