The Possibility of Promoting Bio-recycling System by Green-consuming Action
Shusaku Sawaragi*, Takasei Kusube** and Masaaki Naito*Abstract
Promoting a bio-recycle system is one of the most crucial issues today. Focusing on organic vegetables, this study has assessed the possibility of how much Green-consumer activity can be a driving force to promote bio-recycling.
Willingness To Pay for organic vegetables by consumers has been evaluated by means of CVM questionnaires and sales experiments. The results of surplus WTP toward organic vegetables compared with ordinary ones are estimated <26.6% by CVM questionnaires and <14.9% by sales experiments. This shows the discrepancy between the "consciousness" and "action" of consumers.
From the results, it is proved that being a Green-consumer can be effective to some extent, to promote bio-recycling. However, creating new social systems including equal allocation of recycling costs or reformation of distribution is needed for promoting bio-recycling extensively, since the actual average price of organic vegetables is <32.3% higher than that of ordinary ones sold in markets.
Key words: bio-recycling, organics, green-consume, CVM, sales experiments