Growing awareness of the environmental damage associated with conventional product packaging has led to keen interest in ‘green’, ‘environmentally friendly’ or ‘sustainable’ packaging. Research tells us a great deal about how the ‘environmental friendliness’ of a package may influence a consumer purchasing decision, but we have little scientific insight into the attributes that shape consumer perceptions of ’environmental friendliness. Hence, we examined how the interplay of environmentally friendly packaging attributes influences an overall evaluation of environmental friendliness, surveying attitudes from three Western consumer cultures: Germany, France, and the U.S. We found that consumers focus predominantly on end-of-life attributes of packaging, although the cultures differ in how they weigh the relative value of recyclability, reusability and biodegradability. We found that consumers concern themselves less with renewable origins, and almost not at all with activities relating to production, transport and retail use. We also found that widespread misunderstanding of biomethane continues to exist; further, the fact that biomethane is ‘biobased’ counts little in consumer ratings if the product is not also ‘biodegradable’. Ethical concerns about the use of agricultural land to produce biogas substrates are raised primarily by German consumers. A comparison with results from LCA studies of packaging revealed a number of discrepancies between consumer perception and facts on the environmental impact of different packaging options. Brand owners advancing environmentally friendly packaging initiatives are advised to feature those eco-advantages that pertain to the post-use phase and to differentiate packaging strategies across countries.

人们越来越意识到与常规产品包装相关的环境损害，这引起了人们对“绿色”，“环保”或“可持续”包装的浓厚兴趣。研究告诉我们，包装的“环境友好性”如何影响消费者的购买决定，但是我们对塑造消费者对“环境友好性”看法的属性缺乏科学的见识。因此，我们研究了环保包装属性之间的相互作用如何影响环境友好性的总体评估，并调查了三种西方消费文化：德国，法国和美国的态度。我们发现，消费者主要关注包装的报废属性，尽管文化在衡量可回收性相对价值的方式上有所不同，可重用性和生物降解性。我们发现，消费者对可再生能源的关注较少，而与生产，运输和零售使用有关的活动则几乎根本不关注。我们还发现，对生物甲烷的广泛误解仍然存在。此外，如果产品也不是“可生物降解的”，那么生物甲烷是“基于生物的”这一事实对消费者的评价就没有多大意义了。德国消费者主要提出了关于使用农业土地生产沼气底物的伦理问题。与LCA包装研究的结果进行比较后，发现消费者对不同包装选择的环境影响的看法与事实之间存在许多差异。