Product information can promote sustainable food consumption

2012

Progress in transforming current food consumption and production practice in a sustainable direction is slow. Communicative, sustainable consumer policy instruments such as eco-labeling schemes have limited impact outside the green segment and within the mainstream market. This article asks how sustainably produced food can be described in order to promote such food. Based on six cases, it aims to conceptualize the common denominators of sustainable food production by drawing on recent literature on sustainable marketing and on food and sustainable development. Contradictions and implications in terms of labeling schemes, global sourcing and consumer food practice are discussed.

Appetite, 2007

We tested how consumers recognize, understand and value on-package information about food production methods that may contribute to a more sustainable agriculture. Nine copy tests were formed, each containing one out of three products and one out of three panels of information. The products were (1) fillet of chicken, (2) semi-skimmed milk and (3) fillet of salmon. The panels of information were (a) a certified organic logo and details about the animal welfare standards of organic products, (b) just the logo, or (c) a statement in which the product was attributed to the world market. About 371 customers of a supermarket in the city of Amsterdam filled in a questionnaire, which included a subset of three copy tests. The results showed that many consumers did not realize that the organic logo already covers all the standards. They were inclined to underestimate the distinctive advantage of the logo; products with logo and details got higher ratings of positive attributes but were also considered more expensive. As a consequence, the detailed information panels enabled consumers to choose more in agreement with their personal values but the net impacts on purchase intentions were small. r

WRAP, 2019

A wide range of labels, accreditations, procurement tools and other information sources are used to indicate to consumers the relative environmental sustainability of a product. This is to inform decision-making and potentially encourage purchase of less environmentally damaging products. However, given the range of approaches and products that such information may be applied to, there is a need to bring together evidence to assess and potentially improve its effectiveness. As such, this report was commissioned to explore the existing evidence to address the following primary research question: What evidence is there about the effectiveness of providing factual information (including content, source and format) on the environmental sustainability of a product in influencing consumer (individual and organisational) buying decisions? Secondary research questions related to other factors that have a role in influencing consumers, including other product information and consumer characteristics. Research protocol A rapid evidence assessment (REA) methodology was used to identify research relating to the primary research question. An REA is intended to be a systematic, but rapid review of the literature and to offer an assessment of relevance and robustness of the extant, peer-reviewed and grey literature. Whilst not intended to be as exhaustive as a systematic review, an REA can nevertheless provide a comprehensive coverage of the literature (within the time available) and provide conclusions that are weighted by the quality of the available evidence. Interviews were conducted with experts in the field of labelling to inform the development of the search protocol, and provide insight into key areas of work. The primary research question was operationalised by identifying the Population (individuals and organisational consumers), the Intervention (provision of factual information on the environmental sustainability of a product), the Comparison (no factual information), and the Outcome (purchasing behaviour) i.e. the PICO1 elements of the question. Search terms relating to the PICO elements were generated and search strings used in the literature databases Scopus and Web of Science, as well as the internet search engine, Google (for grey literature). Using a formalised inclusion and exclusion criteria, an iterative process of identifying relevant literature based on titles, abstracts and then full texts was used to form an evidence base of literature. The evidence was then assessed for relevancy and robustness and the findings extracted. Findings were synthesised to provide insight into the primary and secondary research questions. Confidence statements for converging findings were then given based on the amount and assessed quality of the evidence (low, medium, or high). If findings diverged, then the influence is stated as contested. 1 Population, Intervention, Comparison, and Outcome WRAP - The Effectiveness of Providing Pre-Purchase Factual Information in encouraging more Environmentally Sustainable Product Purchase Decisions: Expert Interviews and a Rapid Evidence Assessment 2 Evidence characteristics The evidence base for this REA was cumulatively large (72 sources were included); however, given the heterogeneity of products and environmentally sustainable information across the studies, the evidence was grouped into smaller, more comparable sub-sets of evidence. Grouping was done first by product category, then within those groups, by the category of sustainability information. Studies on appliances2 were the most frequent in the evidence base, followed by cleaning products/home chemical products. Energy efficiency and energy consumption were the two most frequent environmentally sustainable information aspects tested. Evidence synthesis Overall, there is robust evidence that energy consumption information (particularly the EU Energy Label) can influence purchase behaviour and intentions (although there is less evidence for the Korean Energy Frontiers and China Energy Efficiency label and contested evidence for ENERGY STAR). There is contested evidence that information on monetary running costs for appliances instead of (or in addition to) energy consumption has a positive impact. For other environmentally sustainable aspects there is a wider range of products and information3 explored, which means it is difficult to draw conclusions. However, across the products, for environmentally sustainable aspects including carbon footprint, recycled parts, organic and remanufactured there is some evidence that labelled products may be preferred over unlabelled products, with a higher willingness to pay (WTP) for the labelled products and lower WTP for the unlabelled. A small number of studies also explored multiple aspects of environmental sustainability4 to assess the relative WTP for each one. From these findings, it is suggested that which form of sustainability is most influential may depend on the consumer’s understanding of what the label means; the more the consumers understand what the label means, the more likely they are to be willing to pay more. Evidence for individuals as consumers is more prolific than the evidence available for organisations as consumers. As organisations can frequently have strong buying power, understanding the use of environmental information within their procurement strategies will be important if organisations are to be persuaded to buy and use products which are less environmentally harmful. What evidence there is in this REA suggests that some organisations incorporate environmental performance of companies when procuring a service, but this may be related to the nature of the organisation itself (e.g. they have sustainability policies). 2 Fridges, freezers, washing machines and so on 3And several studies looked at multiple environmental impacts covered by an eco-label, or sustainability verified by a stewardship label 4 For example, carbon footprint or water eco-toxicity WRAP - The Effectiveness of Providing Pre-Purchase Factual Information in encouraging more Environmentally Sustainable Product Purchase Decisions: Expert Interviews and a Rapid Evidence Assessment 3 Price was often indicated, or found to be, an important factor in consumers’ decisions. Price concerns may override environmental concern. However, in some instances the WTP literature suggests that, to a point, consumers may be willing to pay a premium for environmentally labelled products. There was also some limited evidence that labels are less influential amongst older consumers. In all cases, the influence of information is likely to depend on the product, with the same information potentially having an influence on one product but not another. Conclusions and implications Within the evidence base, a wide range of products has been explored in combination with a wide range of environmentally sustainable information. In turn, this information is presented in a range of different forms, content and framing. As such, giving an answer to the primary research question that adequately captures the individual nature of information and product combination is challenging. Furthermore, consumer characteristics, such as: environmental concern; demographic factors; the importance placed on price or brand, and understanding of what the label signifies, may each have a bearing on how effective the information is at influencing the consumer’s decisions. However, many studies show that providing information on environmental impact can influence consumers’ buying decisions, at least in an experimental situation. Further research is required using standardised, robust methodologies that enable comparison across products and information types. In particular, further field trials or experiments that involve the participant making a purchase (e.g., experimental auctions) are required to have greater confidence in the evidence for labels, particularly non-energy labels.

Journal of Environmental Psychology

Previous research suggests that consumers can be encouraged to purchase environmentally friendly groceries by means of persuasive messages. The present intervention study investigated whether providing information about how consumers can help mitigate environmental and social problems through everyday purchasing decisions can (a) strengthen consumers' intentions to purchase sustainable groceries (e.g., ecological and fair trade foods), (b) promote actual purchases of sustainable groceries, and (c) strengthen self-efficacy beliefs in the domain of sustainable development (the assumed determinant of sustainable consumption). The results suggest that the intervention strengthened consumers' intentions to purchase domestic, seasonal, and certified ecological products. In addition, the intervention promoted the actual purchasing of certified ecological and fair trade products. Effects of the intervention on self-efficacy beliefs were, however, nonsignificant. We discuss whether increased knowledge and consciousness might have accounted for some of the observed effects on purchasing intentions and actual purchases of sustainable groceries.

Tạp chí Phát triển Khoa học Công nghệ, 2014

The environmental problem is causing growing concerns and the food industry is sometimes perceived as one of the main contributors to environmental degradation. But, at the same time, the rapidly growing world's population requires increased food production. In addition, the industry is becoming more environmentally conscious and so food companies are looking for new processes, called "clean processes," to reduce energy use, water consumption, CO2 emission and waste generation, as well as decreasing production cost. In parallel, consumers in a purchase situation are exposed to various types of information such as brand, price, packaging, product origin, nutritional values, etc., often mentioned by claims or labels. The question that naturally arises is: Is it necessary to communicate with consumers about the notion of clean food-processing? And if so, would this information modify their product quality perception? The aim of this study was to explore the influence of communication about foodprocessing environmental impact on the global liking of food products for French consumers and to investigate the link with their knowledge about sustainability and behavior. To address this issue, a consumer test with two different industrial breads in two conditions (one blind and one with a food-processing labelling) was carried out with 209 consumers. At the end of the test, participants were administrated a questionnaire to assess their general knowledge and behaviors related to sustainability. Results show that the most preferred product in blind condition was perceived as better when presented with a clean process label, and was not affected by an energy-consuming process label. Conversely, the least liked product was not affected by a clean process label but was depreciated by a negative one. These results suggest that the quality perceived by the consumer can be influenced by labelling products with information about sustainably.

World Resources Institute, 2022

Food production accounts for a quarter of all greenhouse gases, making shifting people’s diets toward lower carbon foods a critical strategy for reducing emissions. This study finds that displaying thoughtfully framed environmental messages on restaurant menus can significantly increase customers' uptake of lower carbon, plant-rich dishes. WRI finds that the two most effective descriptive messages doubled the chance that a consumer would order a vegetarian menu item. These themes are “small changes can make a big difference” and “join a movement of people choosing foods with less impact on the climate.” ​ Restaurants and food businesses should use these findings to increase sales of lower carbon menu items while helping consumers choose foods that fit a climate-friendly lifestyle. While the WRI study was done online with more than 6,000 participants, the findings can be adapted and tailored to a wide variety of retail and food service contexts. ​ More research and real-world lea...

American Journal of Bioethics, 2024

When making substituted judgments for incapacitated patients, surrogates may often struggle to guess what the patient would want if they had capacity. Surrogates may also agonise over having the (sole) responsibility of making such a determination. To address such concerns, a Patient Preference Predictor (PPP) has been proposed that would use an algorithm to infer the treatment preferences of individual patients from population-level data about the known preferences of people with similar demographic characteristics. However, critics have suggested that even if such a PPP were more accurate, on average, than human surrogates in accurately identifying patient preferences, the proposed algorithm would nevertheless fail to respect the patient’s (former) autonomy since it draws on the ‘wrong’ kind of data: namely, data that are not specific to the individual patient and which therefore may not reflect their actual values, or their reasons for having the preferences they do. Taking such criticisms on board, we here propose a new approach: the Personalized Patient Preference Predictor (P4). The P4 is based on recent advances in machine learning, which allow technologies including large language models to be more cheaply and efficiently ‘fine-tuned’ on person-specific data. The P4, unlike the PPP, would be able to infer an individual patient’s preferences from material (e.g., prior treatment decisions) that is in fact specific to them. Thus, we argue, in addition to being potentially more accurate at the individual level than the previously proposed PPP, the predictions of a P4 would also more directly reflect each patient’s own reasons and values. In this article, we review recent discoveries in artificial intelligence research that suggest a P4 is technically feasible, and argue that, if it is developed and appropriately deployed, it should assuage some of the main autonomy-based concerns of critics of the original PPP. We then consider various objections to our proposal and offer some tentative replies.