PERCEPCIÓN DEL CONSUMIDOR DE SISTEMAS DE ECOETIQUETADO DE PRODUCTOS: APLICACIÓN A LAVADORAS DE USO DOMÉSTICO

Abstract

Currently, the market for household appliances has many very similar products, resulting sometimes imperceptible for consumers to identify differences among them. This is more remarkable when products have been designed taking into account environmental requirements such as eco-efficiency, recyclability, low impact materials, etc., since these characteristics are related to technical attributes that are not visible at aesthetical level. To boost environmental communication between products and consumers, different ecolabel systems have been developed. They allow to communicate the environmental behaviour of products in a reliable way and to identify those with a better environmental performance. However, apart from providing information to consumers, eco-labels need to connect to the environmental subjective perceptions of consumers, in order to integrate them into their purchase criteria. Through the application of product semantics, this communication shows the results of a study on consumer perception of different ecolabels applied to household washing machines, since this product is especially relevant in policies related to ecodesign, ecolabelling and energy efficiency.