Carbon Labeling for Consumer Food Goods

Sharon Shewmake, Abigail Okrent (), Lanka Thabrew and Michael Vandenbergh

No 124369, 2012 Annual Meeting, August 12-14, 2012, Seattle, Washington from Agricultural and Applied Economics Association

Abstract: We construct a model to predict how consumers will respond to better information about the carbon content of 42 foods and a nonfood composite as well as product categories through a label, and provide guidance as to what kinds of goods would provide the highest CO¬2eq emission reductions through a labeling scheme. Our model assumes that consumers value their individual carbon footprint, allowing us to utilize estimates of own- and cross-price elasticities of demand from the literature on demand analysis. We make three different assumptions about how consumers currently value their carbon footprint and find that when a label informs consumers, their baseline perception matters. We also find that carbon labels on alcohol and meat would achieve the largest decreases in carbon emissions.

Keywords: Agricultural and Food Policy; Consumer/Household Economics; Demand and Price Analysis; Environmental Economics and Policy; Resource /Energy Economics and Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 29
Date: 2012
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ene, nep-env and nep-mkt
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:aaea12:124369

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.124369

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