Current consumption patterns in the Global North are unsustainable across environmental, social, and economic dimensions. To promote more sustainable consumer behavior, emotional priming on social media has become an increasingly popular tool. In this paper, we mimic social media content to test the effectiveness of emotional priming in incentivizing sustainable consumption. Specifically, we examine whether emotionally primed information about sustainability aspects in cocoa production increases consumers’ valuation for sustainably produced products in the short and medium term. To achieve this, we conducted an online panel survey of 2,161 German consumers with random assignment to one of four different treatments (unprimed information or information with emotional prime) designed as social media posts (videos). We differentiate between environmental sustainability and social responsibility, and separate the products into sustainability certification, uncertified claims, and conventional chocolate. We find statistically significant positive effects of the emotional primes on consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for products with sustainability certifications and non-certified sustainability claims in the short term. These effects can be attributed to negative emotions triggered by the primes. Two weeks after the treatments, the WTP decreases for all groups. The difference in WTP between the primed and unprimed groups diminishes in the medium term. Primed participants value sustainability certifications and claims less than those who received unprimed information.

To learn about the role of information content and source as catalysts to increase consumers' valuation of fairly traded foods, we conducted an online survey with 2500 consumers representative of the German population. Within the online survey, respondents were randomly assigned to one of five information treatments or the control group. We employ the contingent valuation approach to measure the willingness-to-pay (WTP) premium for chocolate with the Fairtrade label compared to similar conventional chocolate. To estimate WTP and another outcome which measures the participants' purchasing intentions, we use ordinary least squares and interval regressions. We find that German consumers are willing to pay a high price premium for a Fairtrade label despite limited knowledge about the certification. This WTP is relatively robust to additional supportive information provision irrespective of the information source. However, the purchasing intention can rise due to information provided by a retailer or the government. While a supportive statement by a university does not seem to incentivize the valuation of Fairtrade certified chocolate, we find that an unsupportive (zero effect) statement of the same source can discourage the purchasing intention. Our findings imply that policymakers and communicators of scientific information need to mind the risk of generalized science communication aiming at forming the public opinion and create information campaigns to increase purchasing frequency.

A number of self-beneficial motives can trigger pro-environmental and prosocial behavior of individuals. We focus on the role of the warm glow of giving—the personal benefit people experience when doing good irrespective of the consequences—in the valuation of ethically certified food products. Our data is based on an online experimental auction with more than 800 consumers in Germany. Participants bid on tea and chocolate advertised with prosocial and pro-environmental certifications after being randomly exposed to affectively and informatively framed messages. We also measured the experienced warm glow of participants. Our main results are (1) that the experienced warm glow is only linked to a higher willingness-to-pay of older and higher income respondents; (2) that the experienced warm glow does not differ between prosocial and pro-environmental causes; and (3) that treatment effects do not differ according to the participants’ warm glow level but according to the certification itself.

Voluntary standards have become a promising mode of governance to promote sustainable production and consumption in global value chains. Despite a growing number of studies on consumers' preferences for sustainable products, insufficient attention has been paid to the heterogeneity of existing standard systems, which prioritize different issues (e.g., environment, labor, and health), have different origins and sponsors, imply different costs and stringency. How do these features affect consumer support across market contexts? By conducting a choice-based conjoint experiment with tea drinkers in China and the UK (N = 1823), we find that consumer support for sustainable tea standards in both countries is primarily driven by food safety concerns, to a lesser extent by concerns of environmental and labor issues. Moreover, Chinese consumers support highly stringent standards only, whereas British consumers also accept medium-level standards. Standard sponsor and origin matter for consumers in China only who favor government-designed, international standards. Consumers' preferences for key standard features are associated with individual values, the warm glow of giving, and sustainability concerns but such relationships vary in the two markets. Our findings have important implications for scaling-up sustainability standards in both emerging and developed markets.

In einer in Bezug auf Alter, Geschlecht, Bildung und regionale Verteilung reprasentativen Online-Befragung der Bevolkerung in Deutschland haben wir im Zeitraum vom 9. April bis zum 20. April 2020, also zu einem Hohepunkt der bisherigen Einschrankungen des offentlichen und privaten Lebens ('Lock-down') im Zuge der Corona-Pandemie in Deutschland, 947 Verbraucher*innen zu Risikowahrnehmungen, Einkaufs-, Ernahrungs- und Kochverhalten sowie zur Krisenfestigkeit des Ernahrungssystems befragt. Die Erhebung ist als Panelstudie mit insgesamt drei Erhebungswellen angelegt, wobei dieselben Personen mehrmals befragt werden. In der vorliegenden Studie werden die Ergebnisse der ersten Befragungswelle berichtet.

Nach der ersten in Bezug auf Alter, Geschlecht, Bildung und regionale Verteilung reprasentativen On-line-Befragung der Bevolkerung in Deutschland zu ihrem Einkaufs-, Ernahrungs- und Kochverhalten sowie zur Krisenfestigkeit des Ernahrungssystems wahrend des Lockdowns im April 2020 (Busch et al. 2020) haben wir dieselbe Personengruppe im Juni 2020 ein zweites Mal befragt. Geplant ist eine dritte Befragung zu einem spateren Zeitpunkt in 2020. In der vorliegenden Studie werden die Ergebnisse der zweiten Befragung - auch im Vergleich zur ersten Studie - berichtet. Die Befragung der 603 Verbraucher*innen erfolgte im Zeitraum vom 12. bis zum 21. Juni 2020, also zu einem Zeitpunkt geringer In-fektionszahlen in Deutschland sowie weitestgehender Lockerungen der Beschrankungen des offentlichen Lebens. [...]

Food products with ethical claims are stacked on supermarket shelves in ever increasing numbers, but their share of total food sales does not usually climb above a one-digit figure. Numerous consumer studies have investigated the motives of consumers to purchase food items with ethical claims, as well as the potential purchase barriers. The presented study merges these insights with the concept of the warm glow of giving, which originates from public good theory, as we enlist food items with ethical claims as private goods with public good characteristics. The warm glow of giving reflects personal gain from an act of altruism. How the warm glow influences the intention to purchase food items with ethical claims, and the actual food choice, is the core question of this paper. Going into more depth, prosocial (fair-trade) and pro-environmental (organic and carbon-neutral) claims are explored separately, and cross-cultural differences are pointed out. The empirical analysis is based on a representative consumer survey in the U.K. (n = 452) and Germany (n = 465) which incorporated a choice-based conjoint analysis. Both are mature markets for food items with ethical claims, yet with varying degrees of market penetration for prosocial and pro-environmental claims. Our results suggest a higher level of warm glow in the German sample, leading to a generally larger influence of the warm glow on the evaluation of ethical claims as compared to the U.K. Overall, the fair-trade claim is affected more positively by the warm glow than the pro-environmental claims, which can be explained by its stronger public good characteristic as compared to the organic claim and its perceived health benefits. Additionally, label awareness is a necessary precondition for any warm glow effect as the results of the carbon-neutral claim show. These findings are indicative for the use of the warm glow for marketing and social marketing strategies in order to increase the sales of food products with public good characteristics. (C) 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.