The interest of consumers in ecological product information is growing

Ecological Proses based on previous findings, the results were surprisingly disappointing: Consumers seemed rather insusceptible to the ecological problems of private consumption and proved generally uninterested in information about the ecological quality of consumer products. However, only a few years later, in 1996, a small scale study found a remarkable increase in consumers' interest in ecological product information. It used a simplified method of data collection and a much smaller sample (n = 80, compared to n = 400 in the original study). On this basis, it seemed promising to replicate the original study with a representative sample of respondents from the Stuttgart area in southern Germany. As was the case with the 1989 study, we once more had the opportunity to add a number of questions to a larger survey. Both the 1989 and the 1998 studies were based on personal interviews and were organized as follows: At first., we assessed the unprompted importance that the respondents ascribed to information about ecological product quality. Secondly, we provided the respondents with some information as a stimulus intended to give them an opportunity to reflect on the ecological problems caused by their own consumer behaviour. After that, we assessed the respondents' opinions. We asked them to name other products (different from the examples used in the short information given before) which they felt to be affected by ecological problems. In addition, we asked them to specify the kind of ecological problems these products would cause. Finally, the respondents had to rate the relative importance of information about ecological product quality for product testing and for product labelling.
THE TWO SURVEYS FROM 1989 AND 1998
The purpose of the two surveys was to assess the change in consumers' demand for ecological product information. In short, the two surveys revealed an immense increase in demand for this type of information between 1989 and 1998. But before reporting on the results of the two studies in more detail, it should be noted that the first survey was originally planned as a single study. It was intended to demonstrate the supposed impact of several years of vivid discussion in the German mass media about the potential harm to the environment of consumer products and consumer behaviour. This discussion involved not only general aspects of ecological problems, but also used a variety of very specific consumer products as examples to demonstrate their definitive environmental risks. A rather informal content analysis of print media and of radio and television programmes in 1988 revealed that at least 40 products (and probably many more) had been discussed from an environmental point of view. Among these products were not only well-known examples such as private cars or holiday flights (as harmful to the atmosphere), but also products whose environmental or social risks are less obvious, e.g., cut fiowers from countries such as Colombia or Tanzania. Other examples were coffee, poultry, and pharmaceuticals, i.e., products whose production, in many cases, is harmful to the environment and/or to the social structures and the health of the workers and the population in the producing country. The media coverage was so vigorous that a considerable impact could be expected on the consumers' perception of ecological product risks and on the relative importance ascribed to ecological product information. Although we neither had any theory-based assumptions nor any
Heiner Imkamp The Interest of Consumers in Ecological Product Information Is Growing Evidence From Two German Surveys
ABSTRAGT. In a German survey from 1989, consumers showed less interest in information about ecologically relevant product attributes than could be expected after several years of vivacious discussion in the mass media about ecological problems associated with consumer products and consumer behaviour. However, a replication of the study in 1998 showed a considerable increase of consumer interest in such intormation. In particular, there is evidence that in comparison to common product quality information, on average consumers rate the relative Importance of ecological product information higher, that consumers want product testing agencies to take into account more aspects of products that are related lo ecology, that more consumers would prefer reliable standardized ecological information obtainable at the point of purchase, e.g., in the form of eco-labels, and that consumers view an increasing number of products as potentially affected by ecological risks. Finally, the results show that at least for some products, the scope of perceived ecological risks seems to have increased and that consumers generally are becoming concerned with harmful effects of the production and distribution of a product in addition to the effects caused by usage.