Speaker
Description
According to the IPCC, ambitious demand-side food policies are essential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and achieve the Paris climate change targets. Yet, amongst others due to deeply rooted eating habits, culture, traditions, and limited consumer knowledge about the climate impact of different foods, food consumption choices cannot be changed easily. While demand-side food policies are vital for shifting consumption, their effectiveness and feasibility is debated. Information-based and nudging instruments are less intrusive and, therefore, politically more feasible than most market-based and regulatory instruments. However, how effective are such less intrusive instruments like food labels in shifting consumer behavior?
Despite the public and private interest in the topic and the research already conducted on the perception and impact of carbon food labels, there still is a lack of field experimental studies to causally evaluate the impact of carbon food labels on regular food consumption behavior, especially when it comes to regular grocery shopping in supermarket settings. Research so far has mostly been focused on the impact of carbon food labels on food consumption decisions in survey settings, as well as the impact of carbon food labels on individuals’ food consumption choices when eating out, e.g., in restaurant or cafeteria settings.
Here, we contribute to the existing research by causally evaluating the impact of a real-world carbon food label on individuals’ attitudes, intentions, policy support, and their revealed purchasing behavior in a grocery shopping setting over time. We implemented a survey and field experiment with a representative sample of Swiss residents (N= 2372 in the first part of the study, N = 1605 in the second part of the study) in cooperation with the Swiss retailer and ran a panel analysis of over 5 million consumer purchasing decisions over more than 3 years. More specifically, we cooperate with Migros, one of Switzerland's largest food retailers by evaluating their novel Mcheck carbon food label.
In the first survey experimental part of the study, we evaluated the impact of randomly providing information on the new Mcheck labeling initiative on individuals’ attitudes, behavioral intentions, and policy support. In the second field experimental part of the study, we then causally evaluated the impact of having randomly received information on the new carbon food label on individuals’ food purchasing behavior over time. For this part, we asked for the individual respondents’ informed consent to anonymously analyze their purchasing data. For all individuals who gave their informed consent, we then obtained the food purchasing data via Migros.
Our findings show a positive impact of the carbon food label on individuals’ purchasing intentions and support for a mandatory governmental carbon food label, while the effect on purchasing behavior is rather limited, for instance, there is no effect on the average climate rating of the products purchased. Policymakers should thus not overemphasize the role of carbon food labels in the context of supermarkets but instead, focus on a combination of various sustainable food policies to enable demand-side shifts.
