Abstract
<p>Reduction of carbon intensity of high volume grocery products is potentially a major contributor in meeting climate targets. In a choice experiment concerning fruit purchase decisions in the United Kingdom and Japan, this study estimates consumer willingness to pay for sustainability attributes of production alongside vitamin content, including water use efficiency, waste and packaging, and carbon emissions. Results indicate that sustainability attributes significantly influence consumers’ fruit purchase decisions. Preferences are found to be very similar between countries, with reduction of carbon emissions the most valued sustainability attribute by both UK and Japanese consumers and increased vitamin content the least. This study’s findings provide implications for carbon emission labeling development in the context of international food supply chains, and primary sector strategy encouraging initiatives to improve environmental performance domestically.</p>
Highlights
Changes in consumer demands in many primary sector markets are constantly driving changes in the value chains that primary industries participate in
In a choice experiment concerning fruit purchase decisions in the United Kingdom and Japan, this study estimates consumer willingness to pay for sustainability attributes of production alongside vitamin content, including water use efficiency, waste and packaging, and carbon emissions
When looking at which differences in consumer willingness to pay (WTP) exist between Japan and the United Kingdom (UK), this study finds that WTP for reductions in waste and packaging is the only statistically significant difference
Summary
Changes in consumer demands in many primary sector markets are constantly driving changes in the value chains that primary industries participate in. This study is motivated by a need to improve understanding of the relative importance of multiple environmental sustainability attributes of primary sector fruit production including carbon emissions reductions. A significant dispute concerns the risk that overly simplistic labelling schemes may lead to potentially misleading environmental evaluations by consumers, in a consequence known as the halo effect (Andrews, Burton, & Kees, 2011) This means that consumers may generalise that the product is more favourable on other environmental elements not explicitly identified. There is some evidence suggesting that consumers’ food purchase decisions may be primarily driven by private benefits such as enhanced health outcomes, rather than from public benefits typically associated with environmental goods (Rousseau & Vranken, 2013) With this in mind we include vitamin content as a fruit attribute in the choice experiment.
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