Sustainable food packaging: engagement through the public discourse on social networks
Elvira Ferrer-Bernal is a Doctoral Student in Marketing at the University of Murcia, Spain. Her research focuses on the communication of corporate social responsibility and sustainability initiatives and their impact on consumer behavior. She uses text analysis methodologies, including natural language processing and mixed regression models.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to examine the public discourse on sustainable food packaging, evaluating the main characteristics of that discourse and how risk and analytical message content influence consumer engagement.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors use two studies with databases built from messages posted on Twitter (now X). Study 1 explores the discourse of sustainable food packaging by conducting a content/sentiment analysis. Study 2 examines more than four million messages posted by or mentioning the world’s most relevant food companies. Hypotheses are tested through censored regression analyses.
Findings
The results show that plastic is the term that can better classify how we talk about sustainable food packaging. The authors also show that food packaging messages related to sustainability, compared to those not related to sustainability, are composed using more analytical language, contributing to generating greater engagement. Moreover, social network users remain skeptical about food companies, as the latter messages on packaging sustainability generate less engagement (likes + retweets) than when other users post these messages.
Originality/value
This study addresses important points in the public discourse on social networks about the sustainability of food packaging and its language features. First, the data are representative of the food market with posts from leading worldwide food companies. Second, identifying the hot topics of the discussion on sustainability packaging on social media provides a new perspective on how companies and society view sustainable food packaging. Third, the authors show how the source of the message moderates the impact of sustainability on engagement.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors gratefully acknowledge funding from the grants ECO2017-83999-R and PID2020-116247GB-I00 from the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033) and the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF). Authors also thank the support provided by Fundación Cajamurcia.
Conflict of interest: The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Salvador Ruiz de Maya, Department of Marketing, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Murcia, Campus de Espinardo, 30110, Murcia, Spain. Email: salvruiz@um.es.
Citation
Ruiz-de-Maya, S. and Ferrer-Bernal, E. (2024), "Sustainable food packaging: engagement through the public discourse on social networks", Journal of Product & Brand Management, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/JPBM-10-2023-4768
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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