The role of organic and fair trade labels when choosing chocolate ☆
Highlights
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- Potential of labels to influence consumer choice is limited.
- •
- Influence of fair trade labels is larger than that of organic labels.
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- Organic labels are largely ignored when choosing chocolate.
Abstract
We
investigate to what extent consumers base food purchases on the
information implied by the presence of a label. Firstly, we study
whether consumers are able to identify the environmental and social
labels associated with a particular good or service. Secondly, we
analyze whether consumers find the product information implied by the
presence of a label trustworthy. Thirdly, we examine the desirability,
including taste, of sustainably produced goods compared to conventional
goods. Fourthly we calculate consumers’ marginal willingness to pay for
environment-friendly and socially desirable goods, and finally, we
identify groups of consumers with different preference patterns.
Specifically, we performed a survey including a stated choice experiment
of consumer decisions concerning the purchase of chocolate in Flanders
(Belgium), focusing on fair trade and organic labels. Overall, we find
that fair trade labels for chocolate are more likely to influence
consumer choice than organic labels in Flanders. For most of the
consumers the organic label seems to become superfluous when selecting a
self-indulgent treat such as chocolate.
Keywords
- Labeling;
- Chocolate;
- Fair trade;
- Organic food;
- Stated choice experiment
JEL classification
- D12;
- Q18;
- Q5
- ☆
- I would like to thank all students ‘Environmental economics’ (campus Leuven) as well as the students ‘Advanced Environmental Economics and Management’ (campus Brussel) of the Faculty Economics and Business of the KU Leuven for their help in developing the questionnaire and in collecting the data. Moreover, I would like to thank the Research Center for Economics and Corporate Sustainability of the KU Leuven for funding the taste experiment.
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