ReviewECO-labels as a multidimensional research topic: Trends and opportunities
Introduction
In recent years, many modern consumers tend to be concerned about green products and ways to identify them. This trend is supported by personal values and the wealthy amount of positive feelings that people have when they choose products with an environmental label (Hamilton and Zilberman, 2006, Loureiro and Lotade, 2005). At the same time, people seem to expect higher quality from these kinds of products (Bougherara and Combris, 2009, Zanoli and Naspetti, 2002).
This need to develop and to identify sustainable products led the Federal Republic of Germany (Labandeira Villot et al., 2007, Reisch, 2001) to launch the Blue Angel ecolabel scheme in 1978. Later, environmental labels schemes were strengthened by reports by the United Nations. The UN's first approach was Our Common Future, which provided the first definition of sustainable development as well as a section that described the role of labels in electrical appliances in order to encourage energy savings and to limit the use of chemicals (WCED, 1987). Later, the Agenda 21 report made a greater advance in enhancing environmental labeling programs as a tool to encourage sustainable consumer behavior and suggested that labels be used to support cleaner production in different sectors of the market (UNCED, 1992). Following the advancement made by multiple governments and institutions, labeling initiatives were taken up by other countries such as the US, Japan and France (Hemmelskamp and Brockmann, 1997, Salzhauer, 1991, Salzman, 1991).
From a business point of view, ecolabels are an environmental management tool that can inform customers of products' new green features in a visual way (Thøgersen et al., 2010). However, when a firm can attain positive results and gain consumer acceptance through implementing ecolabeling, it serves as an incentive to design and improve products with higher environmental performance to replicate this success (Wagner, 2008). In this sense, ecolabeling can be seen as an eco-innovation process and product result (Dangelico and Pujari, 2010, Wagner, 2008) because it furthers the emergence of new green products (Van Hal, 2007), new cleaner methods of production, green supply sources and combinations (Hellström, 2007). Therefore, consumer awareness pushes companies to differentiate continuously their sustainable products or the ones that have been environmentally improved. Working in parallel, governments and institutions try to guarantee transparency in the markets and encourage the responsible consumption of goods and services. This creates a cyclical dynamic between three levels: consumers, firms, and governments and institutions.
This situation shows that the relevance of the increase in ecolabel use lies in three significant facts: (1) the effective ecological role of ecolabels in society, (2) the breadth and depth of their propagation by governments and institutions, and (3) the strategic and innovative value of ecolabeling to the companies that adopt them. The first fact reflects the effective role that ecolabeling has in contributing to the protection of the environment (Gutierrez et al., 2012) and its influence on achieving sustainable development. This claim is attributed to the positive influence that ecolabeling has had in reducing the volume and toxicity of pollutants that are released, such as the amount of laundry detergent, soap, or shampoo that escapes down drains (Eiderstrom, 1993, Naturvårdsverket, 1997).
Concerning the second fact, there has been an increase and spread in ecolabel certifications. Starting in 1990 there were only about a dozen, but currently, there are over 435 (Big Room, 2014, Delmas et al., 2013). The ecolabeling phenomenon can also be seen in the products labeled: In Germany, there were fewer than 100 products labeled by Blue Angel in 1979, but in 1994 there were 4271 labeled products (Hemmelskamp and Brockmann, 1997) and today there are about 12,000 Blue Angel products (Global Ecolabeling Network, 2013). In a similar trend, the European Union launched the EU Ecolabel scheme in 1992 (Loureiro et al., 2001). According to the latest report, the EU label has granted 2010 licenses to cover 44,051 products and services from different sectors in 2015 (European Union, 2015).
Consequently, the diversity of ecolabels fostered the institutional standardization of the principles of ecolabeling in ISO 14020:2002. ISO later proposed three categories of environmental labels according to the aspects covered and the rigor required to award the seal: type I in ISO 14024; type II in ISO 14021; and type III in ISO 14025. Additionally, a different category called “Type I – like” is present in the literature, which represents environmental labels focused on just one environmental or social aspect; these labels have been launched by independent organizations (Leire and Thidell, 2005, Panainte et al., 2014).
Turning to the third fact, companies that adopt ecolabels and other kinds of environmental management strategies create value through the eco-innovation process because they have to improve their products and services to get an ecolabel of whatever kind (Monteiro, 2010, Rex and Baumann, 2007). Evidence of this value creation is the growing group of consumers who are willing to pay more for ecolabeled products (Loureiro and Lotade, 2005). As a result, this product differentiation can relax price competition (Nadaï, 1998). On the other hand, ecolabeling indicates that a company has a long-term vision, is flexible, anticipates market expectations, and creates sustainable value for its products (Hart, 1995), all of which contributes to a company's sustained presence in the market and the increase of its financial value (Epstein and Roy, 1998, Klassen and McLaughlin, 1996).
Given the growing influence that ecolabeling has on environmental protection, the welfare of society, governmental and institutional strategies, eco-innovation, and company strategy, it is necessary to develop academic research that is focused on ecolabeling as an eco-innovation process and the future usefulness of ecolabeling for regions and economic sectors. Existing literature reviews are mainly focused on descriptive analyses of institutional concepts and emerging ecolabel typologies (Mungkung et al., 2006), institutional awareness in regulating ecolabels (Ball, 2002, Ponte, 2008), the effectiveness of ecolabels for environmental conservation (De Snoo and Van de Ven, 1999, Kaiser and Edwards-Jones, 2006), and the propagation of ecolabeling in terms of number and marketing use (Buckley, 2002, Rex and Baumann, 2007). Nonetheless, to the best of our knowledge, we have not identified articles that describe the current situation of ecolabeling from an eco-innovation approach, the determinants and dimensions involved in ecolabeling, or the economic sectors and geographical regions affected.
The previous gap recognized in the literature and the value of ecolabels from an eco-innovation approach motivated a dual objective for this research: first, to build a theoretical framework that explain the relationship and dynamic between ecolabels and eco-innovation, their determinants and the dimensions that arise from them. Second, undertake a systematic literature review to determine the current situation of academic research on ecolabels and thereby identifying trends and opportunities for future explorations.
This paper is structured as follows. Section 2 describes the systematic literature review method undertaken and the results of this study. Then, in Section 3 the results and discussion are examined in three steps: the theoretical framework developed to undertake the systematic literature review (Section 3.1), the descriptive analysis of the findings from the review (Section 3.2), and the ecolabeling opportunities and trends that emerged from the systematic literature review (Section 3.3). Finally, conclusions are presented in Section 4.
Section snippets
Research method
In an attempt to discover research gaps and select the most relevant studies from which to infer the current state of ecolabels in academia, authors chose the systematic literature review as an appropriate method for carrying out this study. The systematic literature review is a replicable, scientific and transparent method for defining the field of study, and it allows readers to understand the path researchers take to arrive at their findings (Tranfield et al., 2003).
Following, Tranfield
Results and discussion
In order to address the main objectives of this paper, this section presents an ecolabeling theoretical framework based on the relationship between ecolabeling and eco-innovation (see Section 3.1). This effort provided the foundation for defining the categories used to explore the selected academic papers. Moreover, Section 3.2 includes a descriptive analysis of these 152 papers and recorded them according to the protocol (see Table 2). Finally Section 3.3. presents the analysis of the trends
Conclusions
This paper enriches the literature on environmental management and eco-innovation through the exploration of ecolabeling. This contribution is made in two ways, by providing a theoretical framework and conducting a systematic literature review.
The theoretical framework covers the first objective of this paper: it revealed that ecolabeling necessarily involves a cyclic innovation process with interaction between consumers, firms, governments and institutions. In this way, this paper also
Acknowledgments
The authors are grateful for the award from Universidad de Navarra–Banco Santander to support the first author's Master's Degree in Biodiversity, Landscape and Sustainable Development and for the scholarship from Universidad de Navarra to support the first author's Ph.D. studies. Additionally, the authors are grateful to the Universidad de La Sabana for supporting the Ph.D. studies of the fourth author. Finally, we would also like to express our gratitude to the three anonymous reviewers for
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