UK customers are keen to pay extra for water in biodegradable plastic bottles, however it’s now not sufficient to hide the extra charge of producing, reveals new analysis from Corvinus University of Budapest.
Professor Matthew Gorton from Corvinus University and the National Innovation Centre for Rural Enterprise, and associates, investigated how the kind of packaging (biodegradable plastic or non-biodegradable PET), a charitable donation being made along acquire, foundation (native or international), and value have an effect on on UK customers’ willingness to pay for bottled water. They additionally investigated the affect of customers’ ranges of nature relatedness and inexperienced intake values on acquire.
They discovered UK customers are keen to pay extra for water in biodegradable plastic bottles, in comparison to non-biodegradable PET – as much as 49p additional.
“While consumers are willing to pay more for biodegradable packaging, at present the costs of biodegradable plastic packaging are similar to, or greater than, the average willingness to pay identified in the study,” says Professor Gorton.
“It is difficult for manufacturers to pass on the full additional cost of biodegradable plastics to consumers when switching from PET containers,” provides fellow researcher and affiliate professor Áron Török from Corvinus University.
As worth used to be additionally discovered to be a very powerful facet customers imagine when deciding whether or not to make a purchase order or now not, the growth of biodegradable plastic hinges on cost-reducing inventions.
As customers’ degree of nature relatedness will increase, indicating a reference to nature, biodegradable packaging turns into extra preferable than non-biodegradable. However, upper ranges of inexperienced intake values, associated with environmental fear when purchasing, are related to opting out of buying bottled water altogether.
While customers have a tendency to want native merchandise and can pay additional for them, the foundation of water had a rather modest impact on willingness to pay on this find out about. Therefore, firms will have to do extra than simply emphasise the localness in their product.
Consumers had been additionally extra keen to pay for bottled water if a charitable donation used to be being made with their acquire.
These findings had been first printed within the Journal of Environmental Management.
