Anti-Waste Labeling and Consumer Willingness to Pay

ABSTRACT

Food waste is an important topic in the general context of food consumption sustainability and ethical consumption. Several studies have focused on environment-friendly labeling schemes based on different “ethical attributes,” such as organic, fair trade, and locally grown. However, the effect of a labeling scheme based on food waste prevention has never been studied. In the current work, experimental auctions were used to investigate the effect of a certification about containing food waste within a certain threshold on participants’ willingness to pay. The product chosen for the auctions was the French baguette (500 g) packaged with a paper wrapper. Furthermore, we examined whether the effect would be moderated by different communication strategies about the consequences of wasting. Specifically, two different frames of reference were used: the first is based on the carbon footprint, the other on the water footprint. Our results showed that waste prevention–based labeling positively affected participants’ willingness to pay and that this effect was enhanced by the carbon footprint frame of reference.

KEYWORDS:

• Certification
• consumer behavior
• experimental auction
• food waste
• framing effect

Contributors

Teresa Del Giudice is Assistant Professor at the Department of Agricultural Science. Her research interest has been into consumers’ preferences for food products.

Francesco La Barbera is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science. His recent research has been into social attitude and identity, cooperation and sustainability.

Riccardo Vecchio is a post-doc scholar at the Department of Agricultural Sciences. His recent research interests are consumer attitude and behavior toward food labeling.

Fabio Verneau is Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, where he currently teaches Marketing and Consumer Science.

Notes

The three most important indicators of human consumption of natural resources are ecological, carbon, and water footprints. These indicators are a quantifiable and rational basis from which to analyze the efficiency of production processes and the limits of resource consumption and to address the sustainability of the use of ecological assets across the globe (Senbel, McDaniels, & Dowlatabadi, 2003).