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Presentation
Carbon Labeling for Consumer Food Goods
Agricultural & Applied Economics Association 2012, Annual meeting (2012)
  • Sharon Shewmake, Western Washington University
  • Abigail M. Okrent, United States Department of Agriculture
  • Lanka Thabrew, Vanderbilt University
  • Michael Vandenbergh, Vanderbilt University
Abstract
We construct a model to predict how consumers will respond to better information about the carbon content of 42 foods and a nonfood composite as well as product categories through a label, and provide guidance as to what kinds of goods would provide the highest CO2eq emission reductions through a labeling scheme. Our model assumes that consumers value their individual carbon footprint, allowing us to utilize estimates of own- and cross-price elasticities of demand from the literature on demand analysis. We make three different assumptions about how consumers currently value their carbon footprint and find that when a label informs consumers, their baseline perception matters. We also find that carbon labels on alcohol and meat would achieve the largest decreases in carbon emissions.
Keywords
  • Carbon emissions,
  • Food lableing
Disciplines
Publication Date
August 12, 2012
Location
Seattle, WA
Comments
©Copyright 2011 by Sharon Shewmake, Abigail Okrent, Lanka Thabrew and Michael Vandenbergh. All rights reserved. Readers may make verbatim copies of this document for non-commercial purposes by any means provided that this copyright notice appears on all such copies.
Citation Information
Sharon Shewmake, Abigail M. Okrent, Lanka Thabrew and Michael Vandenbergh. "Carbon Labeling for Consumer Food Goods" Agricultural & Applied Economics Association 2012, Annual meeting (2012)
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/sharon_shewmake/19/