Designing ecolabels in order to mitigate market failures: an application to agrofood products
Résumé
For the market for ecofriendly characteristics of agrofood producs effectively, ùeans of mitigationg 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 falure and (2) considering the ecolabel, not only as tool to re-establish information summetry between the producer and consumer but also as a way to overcome international 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 veriable and private attributes and designing the ecolabel as a cognitive support for consumers. We provide an explorary qualitative study of several French ecolabels to stress how they more or less succeed in attenuating the identified sources of market failures. Several issues requiring further investigations.
L'efficacité du marché des produits agro-alimentaires écolabellisés nécessite de pallier les défaillances de marché telles que l'asymétrie d'information, la surcharge informationnelle ainsi que les conséquences du caractère public des caractéristiques environnementales. Les auteurs montrent le besoin de concevoir et de mettre en place des mécanismes permettant de surmonter ces trois types de défaillances de marché de manière simultanée. Dans la littérature, l'écolabel est considéré comme un moyen de rétablir la symétrie d'information entre les firmes et les consommateurs. La contribution réside dans l'analyse de l'écolabel comme étant aussi un moyen de réduire la surcharge informationnelle ainsi que le problème des biens publics.