Assessing Sustainable Consumption in Packaged Food in Indonesia: Corporate Communication Drives Consumer Perception and Behavior

Abstract

Sustainable consumption has been addressed in the literature in recent years, especially in relation to changing from a traditional consumption to sustainable consumption. Reducing environmental impacts from waste generation has been the focal point of sustainable consumption. However, a large number of attributes has caused a complexity in understanding which attributes effectively enhance the consumption. In particular, sustainable consumption has been facing a negative trend due to low levels of knowledge about packaging’s environmental impact, failed communication which leads to misperception and irresponsible behavior. This study contributes to proposing a set of attributes for enhancing sustainable consumption in the Indonesian food industry, to fulfill the lack of understanding of the attribute interrelationships using qualitative information. This study proposes a set of attributes to enhance sustainable consumption with qualitative information by assessing the interrelationships among the attributes employing the Delphi method and fuzzy decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory method to provide causal and effect relationships. As a result, corporate communication, consumer perception, consumer behavior, and product packaging are major aspects for sustainable consumption enhancement. Corporate communication becomes a major driver to affect perception and behavior. This study proposes a managerial insight for the packaged food industry on improving several criteria including green marketing, green consumerism, verbal features, and importance of information.