Goal

We aim to investigate the socio-economic and psychological barriers to the large-scale adoption of seaweed-based packaging in the food sector, particularly in comparison to traditional plastic packaging.

The project includes identifying the factors influencing packaging choices by consumers via behavioural experiments and surveys. Specifically, we investigate whether providing factual information about the environmental and physical properties of seaweed packaging affects consumer choices and willingness to pay, and explores the role of policy interventions (such as subsidies) in fostering the seaweed-based packaging market.

The consumer behaviour surveys exclusively target university students across four cities with varying levels of plastic waste mismanagement: Munich, Istanbul, Cluj-Napoca, and Lima.

In addition to the surveys, we conduct an in-person behavioural experiment to measure the true maximum willingness to pay for seaweed packaging (compared to plastic packaging) by implementing the Becker-DeGroot-Marschak (BDM) auction mechanism.

We expect to publish our final results soon.