ENVIRONMENTAL ATTITUDES AND CONSUMER PREFERENCE FOR ENVIRONMENTALLY-FRIENDLY BEVERAGE PACKAGING: THE ROLE OF INFORMATION PROVISION AND IDENTITY LABELING IN INFLUENCING CONSUMER BEHAVIOR

Highlights

● Consumer preference for environmentally-friendly beverage packaging was investigated.

● Consumers are willing to pay a premium for post-consumer recycled materials.

● Environmental information and green identity labels have synergistic effect on consumer willingness to pay.

● Product unit size seems irrelevant in most consumer decisions.

Abstract

This study examined whether urban Chinese consumers with stronger environmental values have higher valuations for plastic beverage bottles that are made of post-consumer recycled material (rPET) or that come in large sizes that use plastic more efficiently. It also assesses the effectiveness of environmental information provision and green identity labeling in increasing consumer willingness to pay for environmentally-friendly packaging. The results suggest that urban Chinese consumers are willing to pay a premium for rPET bottles, indicating that there is a potential market for rPET food and beverage packaging in China that calls for manufacturing guidelines, safety standards, or regulations. Providing environmental information and attaching green identity labels increases consumer valuations of rPET bottles, with their joint use exerting the largest effect. Pro-environmental consumers are more responsive to environmental information and green identity labeling and thus are willing to pay a higher premium for rPET bottles. However, in terms of choosing large bottles as a means to reduce plastic use in product packaging, consumers were found to be indifferent about plastic bottle sizes even after receiving environmental information. It is suggested that the inconvenience of carrying or storing large bottles might have offset their perceived environmental benefits.

Graphical abstract

Keywords

China / consumer preference / food and beverage packaging / green identity label / information treatment / plastics

References

[1] Thompson R C, Swan S H, Moore C J, vom Saal F S. Our plastic age. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences, 2009, 364(1526): 1973–1976

[2] Geyer R, Jambeck J R, Law K L. Production, use, and fate of all plastics ever made. Science Advances, 2017, 3(7): e1700782

[3] Bergmann M, Mützel S, Primpke S, Tekman M B, Trachsel J, Gerdts G. White and wonderful? Microplastics prevail in snow from the Alps to the Arctic. Science Advances, 2019, 5(8): eaax1157

[4] Beaumont N J, Aanesen M, Austen M C, Börger T, Clark J R, Cole M, Hooper T, Lindeque P K, Pascoe C, Wyles K J. Global ecological, social and economic impacts of marine plastic. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 2019, 142: 189–195

[5] Jambeck J R, Geyer R, Wilcox C, Siegler T R, Perryman M, Andrady A, Narayan R, Law K L. Plastic waste inputs from land into the ocean. Science, 2015, 347(6223): 768–771

[6] Jenner L C, Rotchell J M, Bennett R T, Cowen M, Tentzeris V, Sadofsky L R. Detection of microplastics in human lung tissue using μFTIR spectroscopy. Science of the Total Environment, 2022, 831: 154907

[7] Marsh K, Bugusu B. Food packaging-roles, materials, and environmental issues. Journal of Food Science, 2007, 72(3): R39–R55

[8] Hahladakis J N, Iacovidou E. Closing the loop on plastic packaging materials: What is quality and how does it affect their circularity. Science of the Total Environment, 2018, 630: 1394–1400

[9] Jiang X, Wang T, Jiang M, Xu M, Yu Y, Guo B, Chen D, Hu S, Jiang J, Zhang Y, Zhu B. Assessment of plastic stocks and flows in China: 1978–2017. Resources, Conservation and Recycling, 2020, 161: 104969

[10] Sachdeva S, Jordan J, Mazar N. Green consumerism: Moral motivations to a sustainable future. Current Opinion in Psychology, 2015, 6: 60–65

[11] National Retail Federation (NRF). Consumers want it all. NRF, 2022. Available at NRF website on January 20, 2022

[12] Kollmuss A, Agyeman J. Mind the gap: Why do people act environmentally and what are the barriers to pro-environmental behavior. Environmental Education Research, 2002, 8(3): 239–260

[13] Fogt Jacobsen L, Pedersen S, Thøgersen J. Drivers of and barriers to consumers’ plastic packaging waste avoidance and recycling—A systematic literature review. Waste Management, 2022, 141: 63–78

[14] Barnes M, Chan-Halbrendt C, Zhang Q, Abejon N. Consumer preference and willingness to pay for non-plastic food containers in Honolulu, USA. Journal of Environmental Protection, 2011, 2(9): 1264–1273

[15] Neill C L, Williams R B. Consumer preference for alternative milk packaging: the case of an inferred environmental attribute. Journal of Agricultural and Applied Economics, 2016, 48(3): 241–256

[16] Wensing J, Caputo V, Carraresi L, Bröring S. The effects of green nudges on consumer valuation of bio-based plastic packaging. Ecological Economics, 2020, 178: 106783

[17] Van Asselt J, Nian Y, Soh M, Morgan S, Gao Z. Do plastic warning labels reduce consumers’ willingness to pay for plastic egg packaging?—Evidence from a choice experiment.. Ecological Economics, 2022, 198: 107460

[18] Laville S, Taylor M. A million bottles a minute: world’s plastic binge ‘as dangerous as climate change’. The Guardian, 2017. Available at The Guardian website on January 20, 2022

[19] Orset C, Barret N, Lemaire A. How consumers of plastic water bottles are responding to environmental policies. Waste Management, 2017, 61: 13–27

[20] Grebitus C, Roscoe R D, Van Loo E J, Kula I. Sustainable bottled water: how nudging and internet search affect consumers’ choices. Journal of Cleaner Production, 2020, 267: 121930

[21] De Marchi E, Pigliafreddo S, Banterle A, Parolini M, Cavaliere A. Plastic packaging goes sustainable: an analysis of consumer preferences for plastic water bottles. Environmental Science & Policy, 2020, 114: 305–311

[22] Yu Y, Lin L. Legal regulation of recycling of food contact plastic packaging materials in China: a case study on polyethylene terephthalate (PET) beverage bottles. Food Science, 2019, 40(19): 370−377 (in Chinese)

[23] Becerril-Arreola R, Bucklin R E. Beverage bottle capacity, packaging efficiency, and the potential for plastic waste reduction. Scientific Reports, 2021, 11(1): 3542

[24] Bem D J. Self-perception theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 1972, 6: 1–62

[25] Schwartz D, Loewenstein G, Agüero-Gaete L. Encouraging pro-environmental behaviour through green identity labelling. Nature Sustainability, 2020, 3(9): 746–752

[26] Lin W, Nayga R M Jr. Green identity labeling, environmental information, and pro-environmental food choices. Food Policy, 2022, 106: 102187

[27] Haws K L, Winterich K P, Naylor R W. Seeing the world through green-tinted glasses: green consumption values and responses to environmentally friendly products. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2014, 24(3): 336–354

[28] Lancaster K J. A new approach to consumer theory. Journal of Political Economy, 1966, 74(2): 132–157

[29] McFadden D. The measurement of urban travel demand. Journal of Public Economics, 1974, 3(4): 303–328

[30] Hole A R. DCREATE: stata module to create efficient designs for discrete choice experiments. Statistical Software Components S458059, Boston College Department of Economics, 2015, revised August 25, 2017

[31] Van Loo E J, Caputo V, Nayga R M Jr, Meullenet J F, Ricke S C. Consumers’ willingness to pay for Organic Chicken Breast: evidence from choice experiment. Food Quality and Preference, 2011, 22(7): 603–613

[32] Cummings R G, Taylor L O. Unbiased Value estimates for environmental goods: a cheap talk design for the Contingent Valuation Method. American Economic Review, 1999, 89(3): 649–665

[33] Poe G L, Giraud K L, Loomis J B. Computational methods for measuring the difference of empirical distributions. American Journal of Agricultural Economics, 2005, 87(2): 353–365

[34] Aizaki H. mded: Measuring the difference between two empirical distributions, R package version 0.1–1, 2014

Supplementary materials

The online version of this article at https://doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2022478 contains supplementary materials (Appendixes A–D).

Acknowledgements

This research was partly supported by a research scholarship from the Guo Tingting Foundation. We thank David Ortega, Coraline Goron and Jackson Ewing for helpful comments throughout the design, implementating, intrepretation, and writing processes which have significantly improved the overall quality of this research.

Compliance with ethics guidelines

Yingchen Xu and Patrick S. Ward declare that they have no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose. This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by any of the authors.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2022. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)