Consumers’ acceptance is indeed the key to a successful introduction of a new or innovative product in the market. And it is for sure related on how much consumers know about the product. Even if relevant in general, such considerations are valid even more for the bio-based products and for a sector – the bioeconomy – that claims to bring positive impacts, that could push consumers towards different (and more sustainable) choices.

But the question is: how much are consumers aware of these definitions? Starting from this, Biobridges designed a survey targeted mainly to people that are not working in the bioeconomy sector and aimed to know more about their awareness on the topic and their purchase habits. The survey, run from July to October 2020, collected more than 1.000 replies from 39 countries all over the world, and was able to have the point of view of many people that are not used to the “bioeconomy world” (84,3% of responders). Such data – that will be also available in the raw format for further investigations and analysis – were analysed by the Biobridges consortium to build the Action Plan for raising consumers’ awareness on bioeconomy and bio-based products, containing a series of recommendations and actions to be implemented by various stakeholders to boost the knowledge of consumers and guide them towards more sustainable (and informed) purchase choices. They are built taken into account the replies provided to 15 questions, aimed to assess: the difficulties in finding a bio-based product during shopping activities, motivation to buy it or not, the price that consumers are willing to pay for bio-based products, the sector in which they are available to buy them and the ones not, and much more. Also, the usefulness of labels in choosing from a fossil based and a bio-based product was assessed, alongside to the information that consumers would like to read there. Finally, they were asked from which channel and from whom they would receive information on bioeconomy. All these questions are analysed and presented taking into account nationality, age, gender, education, work and stakeholder typology of respondents.

Would you have a quick overview of the survey results? Have a look at this infographic!

Let us know what you think about the survey results and the proposed actions! Write us your considerations and suggestions to info@biobridges.eu, we will take into account for related activities in other projects.