Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2022 Mar;46(2):434-448.
doi: 10.1111/ijcs.12691. Epub 2021 Apr 22.

Food packaging during the COVID-19 pandemic: Consumer perceptions

Robert Kitz  1 , Tony Walker  1 , Sylvain Charlebois  1 , Janet Music  1
Affiliations

Food packaging during the COVID-19 pandemic: Consumer perceptions

Robert Kitz et al. Int J Consum Stud. 2022 Mar.

Abstract

While plastics play an important role in the safety, shelf-life, and affordability of many foods, their mismanagement as waste presents a serious environmental problem. In 2019, governments in Canada and globally were poised to take legislative action to curb the use of single-use plastics, with strong public support. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has since disrupted those initiatives as well as the public sentiment underlying them. The aim of our study is to measure changes in Canadian consumers' attitudes toward single-use plastic food packaging, from Summer 2019 to Summer 2020. The methodology relies on two, representative surveys of the Canadian population, carried out in May 2019 (n = 1,094) and in June 2020 (n = 977). Our measures explored potential impacts on consumer perceptions, driven both by new food safety concerns during the pandemic and also by increased price consciousness during a time of economic recession. We found that 55% of respondents were more concerned about food safety since COVID-19, and that 50% of respondents had become more price conscious when buying groceries. However, we found only a slight decline in motivation to reduce plastics - though with a sharper reduction among males. A stronger shift was seen in attitudes towards policy, where our results show a clear decline in support for tighter regulations or bans on single-use plastics, along with an increase in consumers' willingness to pay for biodegradable alternatives. These findings suggest a more difficult road ahead for legislative approaches, but also potential opportunities for market-based strategies and innovations in the food sector.

Keywords: COVID‐19 pandemic; consumer responses; food packaging; food safety crisis; single‐use plastics.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

No authors have any conflicts of interest to report.

Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Conceptual framework of the study
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
Comparison of Responses, 2019–2020: ‘I am personally motivated to reduce the amount of single‐use plastic food packaging because of its environmental impacts’
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Comparison of Responses, 2019–2020: ‘Regulations to reduce consumption of single‐use plastic packaging for food should be strengthened in Canada’
FIGURE 4
FIGURE 4
Comparison of Responses, 2019–2020: ‘I am willing to pay more for an item containing biodegradable packaging’
FIGURE 5
FIGURE 5
Respondents ranking of the importance of new safety concerns during COVID‐19, to their decision to purchase plastics packaged foods
FIGURE 6
FIGURE 6
Responses to the 2020 Survey: ‘Since the beginning of the COVID‐19 pandemic, I have been more concerned about the safety of my food’
FIGURE 7
FIGURE 7
Responses to the 2020 Survey: ‘Since the beginning of the COVID‐19 pandemic, I have been more price conscious when shopping for groceries’
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Abbott, J. K. , & Sumaila, U. R. (2019). Reducing marine plastic pollution: Policy insights from economics. Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, 13(2), 327–336. 10.1093/reep/rez007 - DOI
    1. Adam, I. , Walker, T. R. , Bezerra, J. C. , & Clayton, A. (2020). Policies to reduce single‐use plastic marine pollution in West Africa. Marine Policy, 116, 10.1016/j.marpol.2020.103928 - DOI - PubMed
    1. Aguiar, M. , & Hurst, E. (2005). Consumption versus expenditure. Journal of Political Economy, 113(5), 919–948. 10.1086/491590 - DOI
    1. Ahmad, S. , Wong, K. , & Ahmad, R. (2019). Life cycle assessment for food production and manufacturing: Recent trends, global applications and future prospects. Procedia Manufacturing, 34, 49–57. 10.1016/j.promfg.2019.06.113 - DOI
    1. Ammar, A. , Brach, M. , Trabelsi, K. , Chtourou, H. , Boukhris, O. , Masmoudi, L. , Bouaziz, B. , Bentlage, E. , How, D. , Ahmed, M. , Müller, P. , Müller, N. , Aloui, A. , Hammouda, O. , Paineiras‐Domingos, L. L. , Braakman‐Jansen, A. , Wrede, C. , Bastoni, S. , Pernambuco, C. S. , … Hoekelmann, A. (2020). Effects of COVID‐19 home confinement on eating behaviour and physical activity: Results of the ECLB‐COVID19 international online survey. Nutrients, 12(6), 1583. 10.3390/nu12061583 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources