How Consumers React to Environmental Information: An Experimental Study

ABSTRACT

This study examines the influence of different combinations of environmental product declarations on consumers' perception of product quality, perceived credibility, and willingness to pay, for food products. An experiment involving 321 Canadian consumers indicates that consumers perceive better product quality and a more credible environmental information when there are both elaborated self-declared environmental claims and environmental labeling cues on product packaging. Surprisingly, we also found that, when there are less self-declared environmental claims and no environmental labeling cues, consumers perceive that the information is also relatively credible and is the product of better quality.

KEYWORDS:

• Consumer behavior
• credibility
• environmental product declarations
• environmental labeling
• experiment
• product quality
• self-declared environmental claims
• willingness to pay

Funding

This study was supported by Éco Entreprise Québec.

Notes

¹ In the sample, 63.3% of the respondents were women. In terms of age, 3% were aged 18–24 years; 25.6% were 25–44 years; 47.4% were 45–64 years; and 24.1% were older than 64 years. Regarding monthly individual income, 40.2% earned less than $40,000; 38% earned $40,000–$79,999; 13.9% earned $80,000–$119,000; and 7.9% earned $120,000 and more. Finally, about one-third (30.3%) of the respondents were married, and 26.8% were single.