۱- INTRODUCTION

۲- GREEN MARKETING AND CF LABELS

۳- A BRIEF LITERATURE REVIEW

۴- A PILOT ONLINE SURVEY IN ITALY

۵- CONCLUDING REMARKS AND POLICY IMPLICATIONS

۶- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

REFERENCES

Abstract

Italian consumers’ serveyed revealed a generally positive willingness to pay for milk labeled for lower carbon footprint. Green marketing and related sustainable labels are important devices to convey information to consumers about more sustainable business models. Italian consumers’ willingness to pay for milk with lower carbon footprint analyzed through a pilot survey is positive and significant. Consumers’ willingness to pay also depends on the importance consumers assign to climate change, price sensitivity, as well as on income.

INTRODUCTION

Responsible consumption and production are one of the 17 sustainable development goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development of the United Nations (2015), which states that “It’s in businesses’ interest to find new solutions that enable sustainable consumption and production patterns.” Indeed, analyzing the value chain of a product and identifying hot spots of the life cycle where interventions have a great potential to reduce environmental impacts often lead to economic advantages (Coderoni, Valli, & Canavari, 2015). In Europe, the EU Sustainable Development Strategy sets out the aim of promoting sustainable consumption and production patterns. Its main objectives are decoupling economic growth from environmental degradation, addressing social and economic development within the carrying capacity of ecosystems. The key of this challenging process is the alignment between the behavior of producers and consumers: on one side, producers should always aim to improve their business performance by introducing more sustainable business models, on the other side, consumers should be conscious of the consequences of their consumption choices and adapt their behavior accordingly. For this reason, it is fundamental that consumers have access to information about the environmental sustainability of production processes. Therefore, businesses willing to actively target consumers who are interested in more sustainable products should implement appropriate green marketing strategies. The idea of green marketing emerged in the 1980s, and over the years, a large body of literature highlighted the growing environmental awareness and consumers’ interest in green products or their willingness to pay (WTP) for more sustainable products (Mintel, 1991; Worcester, 1993). The most common instruments to support changes in consumption patterns are the so-called “sustainable labels,” that is, types of labels that are designed to convey to the consumer concepts related to sustainability, considering the environmental, ethical, and social elements involved (Padel, Zander, & Gössinger, 2010; Vermeir & Verbeke, 2006; Zander & Hamm, 2010). Sustainable labels, for instance, can help orienting the consumer toward buying more greenhouse gases (GHG) saving products and therefore mitigating their contribution to global warming. To this extent, they are referred to as “carbon footprint” (CF) labels, as they indicate the grams of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) 1 emitted into the atmosphere along all the life cycle of a product or service, which comprises production, transport, transformation, distribution, and purchase (Kohnle, 2013).