IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/jinter/v16y2005i4p411-430.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Designing Ecolabels In Order To Mitigate Market Failures

Author

Listed:
  • Douadia Bougherara

    (Douadia Bougherara, INRA ESR, 4, Allée Adolphe Bobierre CS 61103, 35011, RENNES, CEDEX, France, Tel: + 33 2 23 48 56 03 – Fax: + 33 2 23 48 53 80, Douadia.Bougherara@rennes.inra.fr)

  • Gilles Grolleau

    (Corresponding author: Gilles Grolleau UMR INRA-ENESAD (CESAER) 26 Bd Dr Petitjean BP 87999, 21079 DIJON CEDEX, France, Tel: + 33 3 80 77 24 43 – Fax: 33 3 80 77 25 71, grolleau@enesad.inra.fr)

Abstract

For the market for ecofriendly characteristics of agrofood products to function effectively, means of mitigating 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 failure and (2) considering the ecolabel, not only as a tool to re-establish information symmetry between the producer and consumer but also as a way to overcome informational 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 verifiable and private attributes and designing the ecolabel as a cognitive support for consumers. We provide an exploratory qualitative study of several French ecolabels to stress how they more or less succeed in attenuating the identified sources of market failures. Several implications for policymakers and managers are stressed. We conclude by suggesting several issues requiring further investigations. JEL Classification Numbers: D11, D21, L15

Suggested Citation

  • Douadia Bougherara & Gilles Grolleau, 2005. "Designing Ecolabels In Order To Mitigate Market Failures," Journal of Interdisciplinary Economics, , vol. 16(4), pages 411-430, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:jinter:v:16:y:2005:i:4:p:411-430
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://jie.sagepub.com/content/16/4/411.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Nicole Darnall & Hyunjung Ji & Matthew Potoski, 2017. "Institutional design of ecolabels: Sponsorship signals rule strength," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(4), pages 438-450, December.
    2. Teisl, Mario F. & Rubin, Jonathan & Noblet, Caroline L., 2008. "Non-dirty dancing? Interactions between eco-labels and consumers," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 29(2), pages 140-159, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ecolabeling; Market failures; Agrofood products;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D11 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Consumer Economics: Theory
    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:jinter:v:16:y:2005:i:4:p:411-430. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.