Environmental sustainability perception toward obvious recovered waste content in paper-based packaging: An online and in-person survey best-worst scaling experiment

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.resconrec.2022.106682Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Redesigned paper-based packaging with obvious recovered waste content was perceived by consumers as more environmentally friendly.

  • Obvious recovered waste content acted as clues for environmental sustainability.

  • Brown paper packaging (made with recycled linerboard) was preferred over white paper packaging (made with bleached pulp).

  • Paper packaging with obvious agricultural waste was preferred over paper packaging with paper waste.

  • The consumer survey presentation format (online vs. in-person) significantly influenced respondents’ preference decisions.

Abstract

This study explores consumers’ visual sustainability impressions of paper-based packaging that has incorporated obvious waste content. Two research questions were addressed concerning (i) the environmental sustainability perception of noticeable waste content in packaging and (ii) the impact of the presentation format (i.e., online versus in-person surveys) when studying these perceptions. Best-worst scaling experiments were conducted, which made respondents choose the ‘most’ and ‘least’ environmentally friendly package. Packages were designed using paperboard substrates blending either brown linerboard or white hardwood pulp with different recovered waste materials. The results showed that consumers perceive obvious waste-containing packaging as more environmentally friendly than classical packaging (with no visual waste). Samples with a brown base and agricultural waste were perceived as more sustainable compared to white packaging and the use of paper waste. In addition, the presentation format changed respondents’ perception, and should therefore be carefully considered when designing surveys.

Introduction

Together with increased global production and consumption, the use of packaging materials and packaging waste has grown. Many packages are intended for single-use applications and consequently disposed of by the final customer. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that containers and packaging make up about 28 percent of total municipal solid waste (MSW) generation in the US, amounting to 82.2 million tons of containers and packaging waste generated in 2018. Half of these packaging products are paper-based, of which 6.44 million tons end up being landfilled (EPA, 2022). While striving for a sustainable and circular packaging industry, opportunities to further recycle and reuse (paper-based) waste for new packaging products exist and should be further explored.

The use of recovered waste content in packaging can reduce its environmental footprint. However, the question remains: is this also perceived as such by the customer or the end user? Comparisons between consumer judgements and environmental life cycle analysis (LCA) results indicated that consumers often rely on misleading and inaccurate beliefs to judge the sustainability of packaging (Steenis et al., 2017). A consumer can judge the package based on the structural (e.g., the packaging material), verbal, and graphical design. While striving toward more sustainable products, both the intrinsic attributes (e.g., manufacturing efficiency or organic ingredients) and the extrinsic attributes (e.g., the package) of the product play an important role (Magnier et al., 2016). Intrinsic sustainability can only be communicated via labels and logos, while extrinsic attributes have the opportunity to be redesigned. Steenis et al. (2017) demonstrated that consumers' sustainability evaluations are highly influenced by graphical packaging cues that have no actual sustainability consequences (Steenis et al., 2017). For example, the use of green color in the graphical design of a package is automatically associated with a higher level of sustainability (Pancer et al., 2017; Steenis et al., 2017).

Environmental sustainability performance has been perceived as a key product attribute, and therefore a source of potential differentiation and competitive advantage for companies (Porter and Van Der Linde, 1995). When consumers make product decisions, the environmental criterion is increasingly important (Peattie and Peattie, 2009). Multiple studies have been conducted analyzing the willingness-to-pay (WTP) for products with beneficial social and environmental performance characteristics. The majority of these research studies point to a higher premium for sustainable products, compared to their less-sustainable alternatives (Salazar and Oerlemans, 2016) . However, customers are growing acutely aware of “greenwashing”, the practice of disclosure of false or incomplete information by an organization to present an environmentally responsible public image (Furlow, 2010). The perception of greenwashing strategies harms consumer attitudes and can lead to loss of credibility and poor purchasing decisions (Lewandowska et al., 2017; Parguel et al., 2011).

Product sustainability perception should be accounted for when developing and designing new sustainable packaging materials. Consumers should be able to easily recognize sustainable packaging based on direct cues provided by the material itself (i.e., implicit packaging cues), without the need for labels and claims (i.e., explicit packaging cues). The redesign of sustainable packaging could be achieved by adding low-intensity processed waste to the fiber furnish prior to papermaking (Chacon et al., 2022). Chacon et al. (2022) showed that by minimally processing the waste, the paper could be endowed with macroscopic and visual particles on the surface of the substrate that could communicate sustainability. It is suggested that the obvious recovered waste content within the package will help consumers to identify the product as environmentally friendly and guide consumers’ purchasing decisions toward these options. Therefore, a deep understanding of consumers’ attitudes toward packaging with noticeable waste content is needed. Previous research has focused on the influence of implicit packaging cues on the perception of consumers by using surveys (Granato et al., 2022). Some of these studies focused on the perception of different types of materials such plastic packaging, or a comparison between glass, plastic, and aluminum packages (De Feo et al., 2022; Weber Macena et al., 2021). However, no studies in this regard were found focusing on paper-based packaging with visually obvious waste content.

The present study focuses on both the structural and graphical design of paper-based packaging, without any information provided by labels and logos. Consumers’ visual impressions on a variety of paper-based packaging materials were explored, which provides insights into consumers’ beliefs on sustainable packaging. More specifically, this study aims to investigate if paper-based packaging with incorporated visually obvious paper and agricultural waste content instils positive sustainability perceptions. Consumer perception was studied by the use of stated preference (SP) methods, which rely on data that comes from consumers’ responses to hypothetical questions. Previous studies have shown that the presentation format used in consumer questionnaires has a significant impact on choice (Mokas et al., 2021; Murwirapachena and Dikgang, 2021). Traditionally, SP methods rely on text descriptions or pictures of the assessed good or service. However, the evaluation of the packaging materials might change when packaging materials are shown to consumers in real life.

Two research questions are addressed in the present study: (1) Does the obvious recovered waste content in the packaging influence the perception of how environmentally sustainable the package is? and (2) Does the presentation format (online versus in-person surveys), which is used to study consumers’ preferences, change the packaging perception? This study aims to gain an understanding of consumers’ choices regarding sustainable packaging and to create a unique dataset comparing both online and in-person survey responses.

Section snippets

Materials

Recycled brown linerboard (RL) (S-19,318, Uline, Georgia, US) and elemental chlorine-free bleached white hardwood pulp (BHW) (International Paper, US) were used as raw materials for paperboard making. Brown (unbleached) and white (bleached) pulp represent the two type of fibers used in paper-based packaging applications (Wu, 2021). Paper and agricultural waste were utilized to endow the paperboards with a visually obvious contaminant content. Copy paper of 75 g/m2 (Husky® copy, Domtar, South

Data collection

The online survey was launched using a respondents’ database from the North Carolina State Sensory Service Center on November 1, 2021 (survey shown in SI S3). The in-person surveys were launched at three different locations in Raleigh, North Carolina, i.e., university campus, a Harris Teeter supermarket, and the NC State Farmers’ Market, throughout November of 2021. A total of 506 respondents filled out the online survey and 228 respondents the in-person survey. A total of 19 (3.75%) online

Conclusion

This study aimed to understand consumers’ environmental sustainability perception toward redesigned packaging that display visually obvious recovered waste content, and the impact of the study presentation format (online versus in-person) on this packaging perception. A best-worst scaling (BWS) experiment was designed, in which a total, 698 respondents participated (i.e., 487 online responses and 211 in-person responses).

The BWS experiment showed that paper-based packaging with obvious

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Sophie Van Schoubroeck: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Lisandra Chacon: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing, Visualization. Autumn M. Reynolds: Methodology, Investigation, Validation, Writing – review & editing. Nathalie Lavoine: Conceptualization, Methodology, Resources, Writing – review &

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Environmental Research & Education Foundation (EREF) (Development of recognizable recycled paper-based containerboard products and their ability to promote positive brand recognition project, Reference Number: 572878).

This work was performed in part at the Analytical Instrumentation Facility (AIF) at North Carolina State University, which is supported by the State of North Carolina and the National Science Foundation (award number ECCS-2025064). The AIF is a

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