Food miles or carbon emissions? Exploring labelling preference for food transport footprint with a stated choice study

Vincenzina Caputo, Rodolfo M. Nayga, Riccardo Scarpa

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    109 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    The ecological footprint of food transport can be communicated using carbon dioxide emissions (CO2 label) or by providing information about both the length of time and the mileage travelled (food miles label). We use stated choice data to estimate conventional unobserved taste heterogeneity models and extend them to a specification that also addresses attribute nonattendance. The implied posterior distributions of the marginal willingness to pay values are compared graphically and are used in validation regressions. We find strong bimodality of taste distribution as the emerging feature, with different groups of subjects having low and high valuations for these labels. The best fitting model shows that CO2 and food miles valuations are much correlated. CO2 valuations can be high even for those respondents expressing low valuations for food miles. However, the reverse is not true. Taken together, the results suggest that consumers tend to value the CO2 label at least as much and sometimes more than the food miles label.

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)465-482
    Number of pages18
    JournalAustralian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics
    Volume57
    Issue number4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2013 Oct

    Keywords

    • Attribute nonattendance
    • Choice experiment
    • Latent class analysis
    • Transport footprint
    • Willingness to pay

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Agricultural and Biological Sciences (miscellaneous)
    • Economics and Econometrics

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