Consumer Preferences for Different Designs of Carbon Footprint Labelling on Tomatoes in Germany—Does Design Matter?

Abstract

The climate impact of tomato production is an important issue in the sustainability of tomatoes, especially in northern European countries, such as Germany. Communicating the climate impact of products to the consumer is difficult and the design of the label might be the key to its success. For this reason, the present study compares the utilities of six different carbon footprint labels to evaluate which label design works best for the consumer. 598 consumers were surveyed in a representative online choice-experiment. The participants had to choose between tomatoes with different product characteristics, such as origin, price, organic label, and carbon footprint label. A split sample approach was used where each sub-sample with around n = 100 saw a different carbon footprint label design in the choice-experiment. The results suggest that qualitative carbon footprint labels using color-coded traffic light labelling are superior to those that claim climate impact reduction or neutrality, including those that provide more details regarding the climate impact of the product and the company. The latent class analysis with four consumer segments shows that a significant proportion of consumers in Germany would consider a carbon footprint label as an important characteristic.

Are Consumers’ Egg Preferences Influenced by Animal-Welfare Conditions and Environmental Impacts?

“…However, they suggested that a carbon footprint label will make a limited contribution to changing consumers' behaviours towards a more environmentally-friendly consumption because of the lack of knowledge, reluctance to change, time preference and uncertainty regarding the relevance of climate change. Meyerding et al [36] assessed consumers' preferences for carbon footprint labelling on tomatoes in Germany and found that carbon-footprint labelling significantly influences consumer food choices. They suggested that the carbon footprint label designs applying the traffic light approach are more effective in influencing consumer food choices.…”

Designed to Be Noticed: A Reconceptualization of Carbon Food Labels as Warning Labels

“…First, carbon labels must provide a frame of reference. Neutral labels [21] depicting the figure of emissions along with a pictorial symbol (such as those used in Australia, France, Japan, Thailand, the UK, and the US) [5] do not meet this criterion; the emissions score is difficult to decipher because consumers do not have a clear reference for what constitutes high or low emissions. Second, carbon labels must provide procedural knowledge [11], which is defined as comparability between products with regard to climate sustainability.…”

“…Third, the labels must be simple as follows: the labels must provide sufficient information to be understandable while avoiding information overload [13,23]. This requirement represents a balance that is certainly difficult achieve despite the use of icons and colors [21]. Traffic-light or color-coded labels meet these three criteria and are, therefore, considered an optimal design for understanding labels.…”

Human Factor in Food Label Design to Support Consumer Healthcare and Safety: A Systematic Literature Review

“…Consumers' ability to correctly understand information shown on product labels can be essential for health and safety [1] or to simply make an informed choice regarding sustainability, respective of personal principles and values [2][3][4]. Indeed, informed decision-making depends on people's ability "to accurately evaluate and understand information about risk" related to a product or a situation [5].…”