Project
Sustainable Labelling for Food: Consumer choice and Inner Mechanisms
The overall objective of this proposal is to find effective measures to promote label effects on users' behaviour and to further the development of green or sustainable agriculture by rethinking the role of labels.
Background
Labelling is regarded as a communication tool to dismiss the information asymmetry between consumers and products. To achieve sustainable development, governments and institutions have issued numerous sustainability labels in the last few decades, encouraging consumers to purchase sustainable products. However, these labels have not reached issuers' expectations. Consumers seldom pay attention to sustainability labels, and their behaviour is not consistent with their attitudes towards sustainability. The intention-behaviour gap still widely exists in sustainable consumption due to the restriction of consumers' perception, attention, and understanding of labels. Current knowledge about consumers' sustainable behaviour has severe limitations: there is hardly an overall understanding of Chinese consumers' perception of sustainability labels and consumption and efficient food labels related to sustainability is lacking in the context of China.
Project description
In our first sub-project, we explore how food labels’ information improves consumers’ understanding. The target product is a new sustainable food product, namely cultured meat. Because many consumers are unfamiliar with it, we specifically focus on the effect of name labelling in a between-subjects study design. In addition to the name labels, we also investigate the effect of additional information related to production method. Names can leave a direct and immediate impression on consumers, which cannot be easily changed later. Hence, it is crucial to investigate how consumers understand name labels. The information processing and understanding process will be analysed in a mediation model based on dual process theory.
Results
Of the 1532 consumers in our sample, most had not heard of “cultured meat” or “cell-based meat” before, although 70% had heard of “artificial meat”. Around 44% of the participants indicated that they would be willing to try CM, and 32% would be likely to purchase it. Participants disliked the terms “cultured meat” and “cell-based meat” less than they disliked the term “artificial meat,” although the latter was the most familiar to them. The provision of neutral information on the production process increased consumer support for CM, but the effect was limited.
Based on dual process theory, we analysed the understanding process in a mediation model with two processing systems: heuristic and systematic route. Tastiness and naturalness are mediators in heuristic processing, and benefits and risks belong to systematic processing. This empirical mediation model reveals how consumers process name-labelling information.