6533b7d5fe1ef96bd12646b3

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Designing ecolabels in order to mitigate market failures: an application to agrofood products

subject

description

For the market for ecofriendly characteristics of agrofood producs effectively, ùeans of mitigationg asymmetric information, informational overload and public goods properties are necessary. Ecolabel success requires a design and an implementation capable of mitigating simultaneously these three sources of market failures. Our contribution differs from many to date by (1) introducing and analyzing the informational overload as a source of market falure and (2) considering the ecolabel, not only as tool to re-establish information summetry between the producer and consumer but also as a way to overcome international overload and public goods problems. We analyze how these sources of market failures may be mitigated by providing information perceived as trustworthy, tying credence and public attributes to veriable and private attributes and designing the ecolabel as a cognitive support for consumers. We provide an explorary qualitative study of several French ecolabels to stress how they more or less succeed in attenuating the identified sources of market failures. Several issues requiring further investigations.