Understanding consumer attitudes towards ecolabeled food products: A latent class analysis regarding their purchasing motivations

Abstract

Ecolabeling is a tool used to promote and support more sustainable products by providing information that enables consumers to select products with better environmental performance. Ecolabels, therefore, can help create social awareness around sustainable consumption and promote respectful attitudes toward the environment, thus generating responsible consumption habits among the consumers. This study aims to analyze the heterogeneity of consumers' motivations in the process of purchasing food products with ecolabels. Additionally, it intends to study consumer typologies regarding their purchasing motivations toward ecolabeled food products to determine possible differences in socioeconomic variables, consumption, and consumer knowledge for these products. To this aim, a total number of 419 questionnaires were collected in Spain during January–February 2019 and a latent class analysis was implemented to segment consumers. The main findings of this study show three types of consumers (indifferent, committed, and skeptical), which present different characteristics, especially regarding their level of knowledge and consumption patterns. [EconLit Citations: M31, O13, Q13, Q56].

A systematic review of emerging environmental markets: Potential pathways to creating shared value for communities

“…Further, these labels are used as marketing tools to build customer confidence, brand recognition, and increase consumers’ WTP premium prices for products like milk, eggs, meat, etc. ( Table 3 ) [ [36] , [37] , [38] , [39] , [40] , [41] , [42] , [43] , [44] , [45] , [46] ].…”

“…For example, consumers from environmental groups had stronger preferences for environmental and food quality, expressing a higher WTP for these food products due to health concerns [ 4 , 39 , 53 ]. Several studies also indicated that consumers are WTP premiums for multiple labelled products (EF, LL and OL), and they prefer to pay a premium price for LL, EL and OL blueberry and food products [ 30 , 40 , 54 ]. However, a decline in product preference is observed for non-food products (forest and wood products) if the logo is poorly known [ 37 , 43 ].…”

Dairy, Plant, and Novel Proteins: Scientific and Technological Aspects

“…However, data quantifying the environmental and sustainable benefits are very limited, especially for protein concentrates and isolates. Some consumers are skeptical about the environmental benefits as well [425,426]. For example, Switzerland consumers evaluated meat substitute products as less environmentally friendly and less heathy than meat [425].…”

Perceptions, attitudes, and motivational factors for consumers and nonconsumers of traditional and craft beers

“…In fact, consumer research is fundamental in the context of sensory science. Within these methodologies market research is noteworthy to understand consumer behavior in relation to food, as demonstrated in previous studies (Doungtip, Sriwattana, & Kim, 2019;Gama, Adhikari, & Hoisington, 2018;Grymshi, Crespo-Cebada, Elghannam, Mesías, & Díaz-Caro, 2021;Silva, Marôco, Alvarenga, & Campos, 2022;Veiga, Johann, Lima, Kaushik, & Mitterer-Daltoé, 2021).…”