Are Consumers Color Blind? An Empirical Investigation of a Traffic Light Advisory for Sustainable Seafood

This paper empirically investigates consumer response to a traffic light advisory for environmentally sustainable seafood, which was implemented in the seafood department of a regional supermarket chain in the United States. Green meant 'best choice'; yellow meant 'proceed with caution'; red meant 'worst choice'. Using a unique product-level panel scanner data set capturing sales information for 2 treatment stores and 8 nearby control stores, we apply a difference-in-differences identification strategy to estimate the impact of color-coded labels on consumers' purchases. We find that the advisory leads to no significant difference in total seafood sales. Green sales significantly increase an average of 29% per week; yellow sales significantly decrease an average of 27% per week; red sales show no significant difference in sales. Green products on a mercury safe list had the greatest increase in sales whereas yellow products not on the mercury safe list had the largest drop in sales.(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)