Ecolabeling schemes, with their focus on environmental, social and other ethical criteria, can contribute to political consumerism efforts in the food system. Following the successes of USDA Organic and fair trade ecolabels, a number of new ecolabeling programs are rapidly emerging in the US. New labels have the potential to benefit smaller farms and to provide consumers more opportunity to express their ethical values in the market. To better predict which emerging labels would see the most commercial success, a more thorough understanding of consumer values related to preferences is needed. Through a series of focus groups, this study explores self-enhancing (egocentric) and self-transcendent (altruistic) values of natural food store shoppers and retail cooperative members in Michigan, as related to seven emerging ecolabel criteria. While self-enhancing values were quite influential in both consumer groups, self-transcendent values were more influential for co-op participants than for natural food store participants. To reach a broad consumer market, farmers could participate in labeling programs that emphasize self-enhancing attributes in addition to self-transcendent attributes. Through marketing and consumer education, retailers and labelers could include a wider range of values for labels in order to generate more interest in participating in political consumerism efforts.
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