Understanding Consumer Responses to Environmental and Organic Labels: A Cognitive and Behavioral Approach

The EU Farm to Fork strategy promotes more sustainable food systems and the development of a coherent sustainability labelling framework. However, the current European labelling landscape features multiple voluntary schemes, such as organic certifications and environmental scores, that can reduce clarity and undermine policy effectiveness. This study aims to understand how organic and other all-encompassing environmental labels interact, to profile consumer preferences and willingness to pay providing novel insights into the cognitive and emotional mechanisms underlying sustainable food choices. Focusing on a packaged food category where health and sustainability cues are salient, the study combines a Discrete Choice Experiment with Electroencephalography and Eye Tracking The combined methodological approach allows observing how the cognitive load, attention patterns, and emotional responses, affect choice behavior, providing deeper insights than traditional economic methods alone. These indicators allow revealing patterns of attention, cognitive load, and implicit emotional reactions, helping explain heterogeneity in consumer responses to sustainability labels. Findings aim to inform the design of clearer and more effective front-of-pack sustainability labels, supporting EU policy efforts to enhance transparency, harmonization, consumer understanding, and the impact of sustainability-oriented food policies.