۱- Introduction

۲- Conceptual framework

۳- Methods and material of the literature review

۴- Synthesis of study results

۵- Discussion and conclusions

References

Abstract

Consumers play an important role in the market penetration of environmentally-friendly food packaging because it is they who decide whether or not to buy a particular product. The objective of this paper is to analyse the state of the art regarding consumers’ response to environmentally-friendly food packaging in order to identify existing barriers to purchase and potential measures to overcome these barriers. The paper is based on a systematic synthesis of 46 scientific journal articles on consumer studies related to environmentally-friendly packaging. The literature review applies a conceptual framework regarding the ways consumers respond to product stimuli and the psychological processes involved. Three important barriers to purchasing environmentally-friendly packaging are identified. First, consumers need guidance in recognizing environmentally-friendly packaging; for while consumers primarily consider the packaging material itself and any eco-labels, they also consider other packaging design elements such as colours and pictures of ‘nature’ that can be misleading. Second, it became obvious that consumers lack knowledge, in particular about new packaging materials like bio-based packaging. Third, many of the studies reviewed provide evidence that other product attributes such as price and product quality are more important to consumers than environmentally-friendly packaging. Nevertheless, some studies recorded a significantly higher willingness on the part of consumers to buy and pay for environmentally-friendly packaging and products with reduced packaging compared to products with standard packaging, signalling an overall positive attitude. The literature review revealed many research gaps. For example, it became obvious that consumers’ response to environmentally-friendly food packaging is not yet well understood, in particular with regards to purchasing behaviour (in the real world as opposed to in a survey setting) and measures for overcoming existing barriers.

Introduction

Human activities are causing irreversible environmental effects, such as climate change and loss of biodiversity (Rockström et al. 2009). A large part of each individual’s ecological footprint stems from their consumption of products. The production and consumption of more environmentally-friendly products is an important step towards achieving more sustainable lifestyles. At present, however, environmentally-friendly or ‘green’ products are still a niche market. Gleim et al. (2013) estimate the global market share for green products at less than 4%. According to FTSE Russell (2018), the green economy accounts for 6% of the market capitalization of globally listed companies. A serious side effect of product consumption is the generation of packaging waste. The global packaging market was estimated at 4,300 billion packaging units in 2015, of which 73% were for food and drinks (ALL4PACK 2016). In the European Union, 1,130 billion packages were used for food and drinks in 2018 (Fuhr et al. 2019). Since 2010, waste production has grown at an annual rate of 4.2% and is expected to continue at the same rate to 2024. Rigid and flexible plastic is the packaging material with the largest market share, at 47% in 2015 (ALL4PACK 2016). One way to tackle the waste problem is to introduce environmentally-friendly food packaging (Geueke et al. 2018).