Assessment of building products attributes — A comparative study between eco-labelled and non-eco-labelled products available in the New Zealand market

Abstract

This paper examines the differences between environmentally labelled and non-environmentally labelled products available in the New Zealand building market. Specifically it seeks to compare building products that have adopted voluntary eco-labelling schemes with those that have not, amongst paints, carpets and building insulation. This study delivers a comparative analysis of key product attributes identified as performance, retail price, and environmental attributes including volatile organic compounds (VOC) emissions, recycled content, hazardous substances, waste and energy management. Results suggest that for the selected eco-labelled products, there are few performance and retail value trade-offs for consumers when they choose the environmentally labelled products over their non-labelled counterparts. Non-eco-labelled paints have lower prices for comparable performance to ecolabelled paints, but there are no price penalties for the eco-labelled carpets and insulation. In addition, this study identifies that the eco-labelled products provide more coherent, comprehensive and accessible information to retail customers than non-eco-labelled products.