Who is attracted to purchase green products through information provision: A nationwide social experiment to promote eco-friendly coffee

Highlights

• General information provision about eco-friendly coffee stimulates purchase.

• Its impact is diminished by controlling the association with consumer’ demographics.

• Verbal information provision increases sales in environmentally conscious areas.

• There was no significant association with socioeconomic status of consumers.

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of the provision of information about environmentally friendly coffee on consumers’ actual purchasing behavior, focusing on the association of information provision with consumers’ environmentally conscious and socioeconomic status (education, income, and unemployment). A unique aspect of this study is that we utilized a dataset from a nationwide social experiment in Japan involving more than 10,000 vending machines serving brewed coffee. Although we found that in general, informing consumers about the product’s eco-friendliness stimulated consumers’ purchasing behavior, its significance was diminished after controlling the association between the information provision and consumers’ characteristics. In contrast, the sales of eco-friendly coffee significantly increased only when we provided verbal information to consumers in highly environmentally conscious regions, while there was no significant association with consumers’ socioeconomic status.

Introduction

Climate change has been recognized as the foremost environmental issue and the various types of risk caused by climate change are raised in recent studies, such as threatening health and way of living, increasing extreme weather events, and damaging eco-systems (O’Neill et al., 2017; Rogelj et al., 2019; Shindell et al., 2012; Xu and Ramanathan, 2017). Because food consumption is one important cause of greenhouse gases emission (Ivanova et al., 2016), promoting food consumption leading the reduction of negative environmental impacts, also known as sustainable food consumption, is essential (Asioli et al., 2017; Azzurra et al., 2019; Feil et al., 2020; Reisch et al., 2013; Vermeir and Verbeke, 2008; Vermeir et al., 2020).

In order to stimulate sustainable food consumption, eco-label certification schemes have increasingly been adopted for various types of agricultural products (hereafter, “green products”) (Darnall et al., 2018; Nash, 2009). In these schemes, international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) typically provide certifications to producers engaged with environmentally friendly practices, allowing these producers to use eco-labels that confirm their products’ eco-friendliness. Particularly in recent years, the interaction between eco-label certification schemes and coffee production has received increased attention from conservation and development institutions (Fleischer and Varangis, 2002; Hundera et al., 2013; Perfecto et al., 2005; Philpott and Dietsch, 2003; Takahashi et al., 2018; Taylor, 2005).

The coffee industry is viewed as a pioneer in eco-label certifications and adopts mainly three types of certification programs, such as shade-grown certification, fair trade certification, and organic certification (hereafter, we define coffee receiving at least one certification as “eco-friendly coffee”) (Ponte, 2004; Reinecke et al., 2012; Stellmacher and Grote, 2011). In shade-grown certification programs, also known as forest coffee certification, coffee is produced under a canopy of trees or in forests while maintaining harmony with other species and conserving the soil and water conditions (Takahashi and Todo, 2014). In fact, recent empirical studies have found that forest coffee certification contributes to environmental conservation in producer countries, such as Ethiopia, Colombia, and Costa Rica. (Blackman and Naranjo, 2012; Ibanez and Blackman, 2016; Rueda et al., 2015; Takahashi and Todo, 2013, 2014, 2017).

In addition, the market share for eco-friendly coffee is growing substantially (Potts et al., 2014). In 2018, a global share of forest coffee production was 6 percent, while the share of fair trade and organic coffee were 7 percent and 4 percent, respectively (Meier et al., 2020). Between 2017 and 2020, the global production and sales volumes of one type of forest coffee, such as the Rainforest Alliance coffee, grew by 38 percent and 39 percent, respectively (Rainforest Alliance, 2021). Furthermore, many empirical studies have found that a majority of consumers are willing to pay extra for eco-friendly coffee (Galarraga and Markandya, 2011; Lingnau et al., 2019). For example, Loureiro and Lotade (2005) found that the WTP for forest coffee is 2.5–3.3 percent higher than that for regular coffee in the United States. Van Loo et al. (2015) confirmed that consumers in the United States are willing to pay an additional 0.84 US dollars for forest coffee. Similar findings were observed for fair trade coffee (De Pelsmacker et al., 2005; Hainmueller et al., 2015; Rotaris and Danielis, 2011; Yang et al., 2012) and organic coffee (Lee et al., 2015; Maaya et al., 2018).

To further promote sustainable food consumption, major attention is devoted to identify the determinants of consumers’ purchasing behavior for eco-friendly coffee (Andorfer and Liebe, 2015; Arnot et al., 2006; Takahashi et al., 2018). Related literature indicates that information provision about eco-friendliness of products is one important determinant factor (Bray et al., 2011; Obermiller et al., 2009; Peattie, 2010; Pickett‐Baker and Ozaki, 2008; Vermeir and Verbeke, 2008). However, its effectiveness on consumers’ purchasing behavior for eco-friendly coffee is not clear (Samoggia and Riedel, 2018). Although several empirical studies showed that consumers’ purchasing behavior was stimulated through information provision (Arnot et al., 2006; Lange et al., 2015; Loureiro and Lotade, 2005; Stratton and Werner, 2013), others indicated that the effect of information provision is limited or influenced by consumers’ demographic characteristics (Andorfer and Liebe, 2015; Lingnau et al., 2019; Takahashi et al., 2018; Yang et al., 2014). In particular, it is unclear how the effect of information provision about eco-friendliness of coffee is associated with consumers’ different demographic characteristics.

This paper provides new evidence on the impact of the provision of information about the eco-friendliness of products on the sales of one type of eco-friendly coffee, such as forest coffee. A unique aspect of this study is that we conducted a nationwide social experiment in Japan involving more than 10,000 vending machines serving brewed coffee. By integrating the vending machine-level sales data and demographic data from governmental statistics, this study particularly focuses on the association between the information provision and the demographic characteristics of consumers.

There are two advantages of this experiment. First, it allows us to determine a clear impact of the information provision. In Japan, consumers’ awareness of eco-friendly coffee is considerably low, at only 3.6 percent (Fair Trade Forum Japan, 2015). Because of consumers’ low awareness, the information provision interventions enabled the generation of an awareness gap between consumers with and without an intervention, allowing an estimation of the impact of the information provision. Second, both eco-friendly and non-certified regular coffee (hereafter, “regular coffee”) were available within the same vending machines at the same price. Therefore, consumers in both the treatment and control groups could choose their coffee based on their preference.

This study reveals that in general, the provision of information about the eco-friendliness of coffee did not stimulate purchasing behavior for forest coffee. However, when we provided information to consumers in regions with higher environmental consciousness, the sales of forest coffee were significantly increased. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to implement a nationwide social experiment to investigate the effect of the association between information provision and the demographic characteristics of consumers on the sales of forest coffee.