Creating markets for eco‐labelling: are consumers insignificant?

TLDR

Voluntary eco‑labelling schemes are often viewed as driven by companies and consumer demand. The study challenges the market‑driven view of eco‑labelling spread by examining fishery and forestry initiatives. The authors argue that transnational environmental group networks and their pressure on firms drove the emergence of eco‑labelling schemes. The study finds that states, through procurement policies and support, helped create markets for eco‑labelling in forestry and fishery, and that even skeptical states now accept fishery labelling as a useful supplement to regulations.

Abstract

Abstract The proliferation of voluntary certification and labelling schemes for environmentally and socially responsible production is often seen as driven by companies and consumer demand. Through a careful examination of the initiation and spread of such initiatives in the fishery and forestry sectors, this paper challenges a rational–economic perspective that sees the spread of nonstate governance schemes primarily as a market‐driven phenomenon. Drawing on a political consumerism perspective, the paper argues that transnational environmental group networks and their targeting of firms were key to the emergence of nonstate eco‐labelling schemes, and that most firms decided to support or participate in such schemes only after intensive environmental group pressure. The paper opposes the view that nonstate governance challenges traditional state authority, by showing that states, through public procurement policies and support, contributed to create markets for forestry and fishery labelling in many countries. Although some states have been more sceptical of fishery labelling, largely because of the way fishery resources are managed, they have come to accept it as a helpful supplement to public rules and regulations.