Investigating the Impact of Health and Environmental Framing on Consumer Preference for Sustainable Food Packaging: A Choice Experiment

Résumé 0

Plastic pollution is a growing issue that imposes not only a great environmental cost but also a great economic cost to Canada. Consequently, consumers, companies, and governments are seeking alternatives to typical PET plastic packaging, namely bioplastics. Bioplastics are seen as a more sustainable alternative to PET plastic as they are biodegradable and made from renewable sources all while retaining the desirable qualities of plastic. The competitiveness of sustainable packaging alternatives depends critically on consumer demand for these products, which is subject to public awareness of the impacts of plastic pollution. While most plastic pollution research has historically framed plastic pollution as an environmental problem, new studies are revealing the harmful effects of microplastics on human health. The effects of framing plastic pollution as a health issue on consumer preferences has been understudied, leaving a gap to fill in economic research. This study aims to assess the current demand for bioplastic and pulp-based packaging among Canadian consumers and the potential informational frames that might sway consumers away from plastic packaging. This study uses the case of strawberry packaging and deploys a discrete choice experiment to answer the question: What are Canadian consumers’ willingness-to-pay (WTP) for sustainable alternatives to plastic food packaging, and how do health and environmental information treatments impact their WTP? This study finds that Canadian consumers across all treatments are willing to pay a premium for bioplastic packaging compared to the control and are willing to pay a premium for pulp-based packaging in both health and health abroad treatments. Additionally, it finds that the health abroad treatment led to the highest WTP for both bioplastic packaging and pulp-based packaging. This suggests that providing information about the implications of plastic pollution for human health could lead to greater demand for sustainable alternatives to plastic packaging among Canadian consumers.