Transforming Chinese consumers’ environmental concerns and eco-label awareness into willingness to pay for eco-labelled food products

The purpose of this paper is to model the antecedents of consumers’ willingness to pay for eco-labelled food products. The research utilises the Theory of Planned behaviour (TPB) to model the impact of consumers’ awareness of eco-label, environmental concern, belief in the environmental ability of eco-label and presence of children on their willingness to pay for eco-labelled food products. The study uses Structural Equational Modelling (SEM) and PROCESS macros, to test the moderated mediation model on a sample of 333 online responses. Findings suggest the impact of consumers’ environmental concerns and eco-label awareness on their willingness to pay for eco-labelled food products is partially mediated by consumers' belief in the environmental ability of these eco-labels. The relationship is also further moderated by the presence of children living in the household. The study establishes the value of consumers’ belief in the environmental ability of eco-labels and implies that communication strategies need to be carefully refined to provide consumers with more information about eco-labels and to emphasise the environmental ability of eco-labels utilised within the food industry as this can have an impact on their willingness to pay for these products especially for consumers with children living with them.