Abstract
Sustainable food concerns have pushed public authorities to act by means of regulations, standards and other devices, and businesses to innovate in their products and production processes. We argue that the Porter hypothesis—which asserts that properly designed and implemented environmental regulation might be good for society as well as the targeted firms—might well be verified in this context. After reviewing and illustrating the working principles and main criticisms of this hypothesis, we provide a more in-depth discussion of nutritional issues. While the literature generally points to organizational imperfections and market failures to validate the Porter hypothesis, we submit and model another rationale for the agro-food industry, a rationale that is based on consumer behavior.
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Notes
According to Porter and van der Linde (1995, p. 98 and 105): “Pollution is a manifestation of economic waste and involves unnecessary or incomplete utilization of resources. (…) Reducing pollution is often coincident with improving productivity with which resources are used. (…) Properly designed environmental regulation can trigger innovation that may partially or more than fully offset the costs of complying with them.”
In this connection, see the debate surrounding agent behavior vis-à-vis risk initiated by Maurice Allais’ (1953) seminal article.
This was put forward early on by the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, in the following provocative statement: “It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of operations which we can perform without thinking about them.”
To our knowledge, very few studies in experimental economics have examined this assertion. A notable exception is Bougherara and Combris (2009).
The first difficulty relates to the nature of the criteria used for attesting environmental performance. How does one assess the carbon footprint or the impact on the water table and biodiversity (which are particularly difficult to measure) throughout the value chain? Next, improving product performance along these criteria often means amending the firm’s activities significantly.
This was the case in the 2011 Spanish cucumber crisis. This highly-publicized condemnation by German authorities of cucumber imports from Spain—a gesture that soon proved to be mistaken, as the problem stemmed from spouted seeds contaminated by verotoxin-producing E. coli strains—led to the collapse of vegetable consumption throughout Europe (Jourdan and Hobbis 2013).
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Some articles examine the possibility that regulations could put certain companies in a market leadership position by inducing R&D. Simpson and Bradford (1996) make this case in the context of international competition.
In these conditions, the higher the quality of the product offered by firm i is, the more consumers will tend to be “loyal” to the preferred firm. It should be noted that, in contrast to André et al. (op. cit.), we retain an additive indirect utility between brand effects and taste quality effects.
Although not explicitly taken into account in the model, a complete illustration of the Porter hypothesis assumes, to be sure, that the social cost implicit in the conventional strategy (cost for the health of the population) is sufficiently high to justify the search for the results of innovations.
The stage 2 resolution corresponds to resolution of the price competition in the production differentiation model considered above. However, our decision to remain with a linear transportation cost for consumers makes it impossible to completely resolve this game by pure strategy equilibria (absence of an equilibrium of this kind for certain parameter values). This hypothesis has, however, the advantage of a simple treatment of the covered-uncovered market alternatives that are of interest to us here.
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Acknowledgments
The initial idea of this paper was widely discussed with Jean-Pierre HUIBAN. This research is part of research program conducted in the following projects: OCAD, funded by the French ANR (ANR 11 ALID 002 03); and ERA-Net SUSFOOD SUSDIET (grant agreement no. 291766), with the Daniel and Nina Carasso Foundation).
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the INRA conference in the honor of Jean-Pierre Huiban that took place on January 27th 2015 in Paris. We wish to thank the participants at this conference, as well as three anonymous referees and the editor, Xavier Irz, for valuable comments and suggestions.
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Appendices
Appendix
Covered market condition
U 1 > 0 if and only if \( \mathsf{y}<{\overline{\mathsf{y}}}_{\mathsf{1}}=\mathsf{1}\hbox{-} \frac{{\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}\hbox{-} {\mathsf{k}}_{\mathsf{1}}}{\alpha } \) and U 2 > 0 if and only if \( \mathsf{y}>{\overline{\mathsf{y}}}_{\mathsf{2}}=\frac{{\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{2}}\hbox{-} {\mathsf{k}}_{\mathsf{2}}}{\alpha } \)
Moreover, U 1 > U 2 if and only if \( \mathsf{y}<\widehat{\mathsf{y}}\left({\mathsf{k}}_{\mathsf{1}},{\mathsf{k}}_{\mathsf{2}}\right)=\frac{{\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{2}}\hbox{-} {\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}\hbox{-} {\mathsf{k}}_{\mathsf{2}}+{\mathsf{k}}_{\mathsf{1}}+\alpha }{\mathsf{2}\alpha } \)
The market is covered if and only if \( {\overline{\mathsf{y}}}_{\mathsf{2}}\le \widehat{\mathsf{y}}\left({\mathsf{k}}_{\mathsf{1}},{\mathsf{k}}_{\mathsf{2}}\right)\le {\overline{\mathsf{y}}}_{\mathsf{1}} \), that is to say:
The market is covered whenever the offered qualities are sufficiently high relative to product selling price.
Case in which both firms adopt the Conv strategy
In this case, consumers unanimously feel that the quality offered by each firm is at level K H .
Equilibrium with a covered market
The demand for firm 1’s products is such that \( {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{1}}=\widehat{\mathit{\mathsf{y}}}\left({\mathsf{k}}_{\mathsf{H}},{\mathsf{k}}_{\mathsf{H}}\right) \) and the profit \( {\varPi}_{\mathsf{1}}=\left({\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}\hbox{-} \overline{\mathsf{c}}\right)\ \widehat{\mathsf{y}}\left({\mathsf{k}}_{\mathsf{H}},{\mathsf{k}}_{\mathsf{H}}\right) \).
The condition for first-order maximization of firm 1’s profits gives \( {\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}=\frac{\mathsf{1}}{\mathsf{2}}\left({\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{2}}+\overline{\mathsf{c}}+\alpha \right) \).
By symmetry, we obtain the equivalent condition for firm 2, which gives the equilibrium price \( {\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}^{*}={\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{2}}^{*}=\overline{\mathsf{c}}+\alpha \) and the market shares \( {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{1}}^{*}={\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{2}}^{*}=\frac{\mathsf{1}}{\mathsf{2}} \). The covered market condition is thus equivalent to:
E1 equilibrium: firms choose a conventional strategy, and under condition (C1), there is a single equilibrium with a covered market such that \( {\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}^{*}={\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{2}}^{*}=\overline{\mathsf{c}}+\alpha \), \( {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{1}}^{*}={\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{2}}^{*}=\frac{\mathsf{1}}{\mathsf{2}} \) and \( {\varPi}_1^{*}={\varPi}_2^{*}=\frac{\alpha }{2} \). In this equilibrium, profits do not depend on variable production costs.
Equilibrium with an uncovered market
The demand for firm 1’s products can now be written as \( {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{1}} = {\overline{\mathsf{y}}}_{\mathsf{1}}=\mathsf{1}\hbox{-} \frac{{\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}\hbox{-} {\mathsf{k}}_{\mathit{\mathsf{H}}}}{\alpha } \)The condition for first-order maximization of profit gives \( {\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}=\frac{\mathsf{1}}{\mathsf{2}}\left({\mathsf{k}}_{\mathit{\mathsf{H}}}+\overline{\mathsf{c}}+\alpha \right) \).
By symmetry, we obtain the equivalent condition for firm 2. The uncovered market condition is thus equivalent to:
Both firms obtain a strictly positive profit in equilibrium if and only if:
We can note that the conditions (C1) and (C2) are never compatible with one another.
E2 equilibrium: firms choose a conventional strategy, and under conditions (C1) and (C2)’, there is a single equilibrium with an uncovered market in which both firms make a strictly positive profit. This equilibrium is such that \( {\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}^{*}={\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{2}}^{*}=\frac{\mathsf{1}}{\mathsf{2}}\left({\mathsf{k}}_{\mathit{\mathsf{H}}}+\overline{\mathsf{c}}+\alpha \right) \), \( {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{1}}^{*}={\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{2}}^{*}=\frac{\alpha +{k}_H-\overline{\mathsf{c}}}{2\alpha } \) and \( {\varPi}_1^{*}={\varPi}_2^{*}=\frac{1}{4\alpha }{\left(\alpha +{k}_H-\overline{\mathsf{c}}\right)}^2 \).
Case in which both firms adopt an Innov strategy
In this case, only informed consumers feel that the quality offered by both firms is at level K H . A proportion (1-l) of consumers feels that the quality is at level K L .
Equilibrium with a covered market
The demand for firm 1’s products is written as:
The equilibrium can thus be deduced form the first situation in the E1 equilibrium, but this time with a marginal production cost at level \( \underline {\mathrm{c}} \). The equilibrium prices are such that \( {\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}^{*}={\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{2}}^{*}=\underline {\mathsf{c}}+\alpha \) and the market shares \( {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{1}}^{*}={\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{2}}^{*}=\frac{\mathsf{1}}{\mathsf{2}} \). The covered market conditions for both consumer types are written as:
E3 equilibrium: firms choose a conventional strategy, and under condition (C3), there is a single equilibrium with a covered market, such that: \( {\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}^{*}={\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{2}}^{*}=\underline {\mathrm{c}}+\alpha \), \( {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{1}}^{*}={\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{2}}^{*}=\frac{\mathsf{1}}{\mathsf{2}} \) and \( {\varPi}_1^{*}={\varPi}_2^{*}=\frac{\alpha }{2}-F \). In this equilibrium, profits do not depend on variable production costs.
Equilibrium with an uncovered market for uninformed consumers
We now assume that for the proportion I of consumers, the market is covered whereas it is uncovered for the proportion (1-I) of consumers. In this hypothesis, the demand for firm 1’s products is written as:
The first-order profit maximization condition \( {\varPi}_{\mathsf{1}}=\left({\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}\hbox{-} \underline {\mathsf{c}}\right)\ {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{1}}\hbox{-} \mathsf{F} \) gives:
We thus obtain the symmetrical equilibrium:
The covered market condition for informed consumers gives:
The uncovered market condition for uninformed consumers gives:
E4 equilibrium: firms choose an innovation strategy, and under conditions (C4) and (c4)’, there is a single equilibrium with an uncovered market, such that:
In this equilibrium, the market is covered for informed consumers and uncovered for uninformed consumers.
Case in which only firm 2 adopts an Innov strategy
In this case, all consumers feel that the quality offered by firm 1 is at level k H whereas only informed consumers feel that the quality offered by firm 2 is at level k H . A proportion (1-I) of consumers feel that the quality offered by firm 2 is at level k L .
Equilibrium with a covered market
In a covered market hypothesis, both informed and uninformed consumers decide to buy from one or the other of these two firms. We obtain a demand addressed to each firm:
The first-order profit maximization condition \( {\varPi}_{\mathsf{1}}=\left({\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}\hbox{-} \overline{\mathsf{c}}\right)\ {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{1}} \) gives:
The first-order profit maximization condition \( {\varPi}_{\mathsf{2}}=\left({\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{2}}\hbox{-} \underline {\mathsf{c}}\right)\ {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{2}} \) gives:
We thus obtain the equilibrium:
The covered market condition for informed and uniformed consumers gives:
E5 equilibrium: firm 1 chooses a conventional strategy and firm 2 an innovation strategy. Under condition (C5), there is a single equilibrium with a covered market, such that:
Equilibrium with an uncovered market for informed and uninformed consumers
In the uncovered market hypothesis for both kinds of consumer, we obtain a demand for both forms’ products:
The first-order profit maximization condition \( {\varPi}_{\mathsf{1}}=\left({\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}\hbox{-} \overline{\mathsf{c}}\right)\ {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{1}} \) gives:
The first-order profit maximization condition \( {\varPi}_{\mathsf{2}}=\left({\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{2}}\hbox{-} \underline {\mathrm{c}}\right)\ {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{2}} \) gives:
The uncovered market conditions are written as:
We obtain:
E6 equilibrium: firm 1 chooses a conventional strategy and firm 2 an innovation strategy. Under condition (C6), there is a single uncovered market equilibrium, such that:
Incompatibility of constraints (C5) and (C6)
We can easily show that (C5) and (C6) are incompatible with one another if and only if:
Equilibrium with an uncovered market only for uninformed consumers
In the uncovered market hypothesis for uninformed consumers, we obtain the demand for both firms’ products:
The first-order profit maximization condition \( {\varPi}_{\mathsf{1}}=\left({\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{1}}\hbox{-} \overline{\mathsf{c}}\right)\ {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{1}} \) gives:
The first-order profit maximization condition \( {\varPi}_{\mathsf{2}}=\left({\mathsf{p}}_{\mathsf{2}}\hbox{-} \underline {\mathsf{c}}\right)\ {\mathsf{D}}_{\mathsf{2}} \) gives:
We thus obtain the equilibrium:
The market coverage condition for uninformed consumers is written as:
which is equivalent to:
The uncovered market condition for uninformed consumers is written as:
which is equivalent to:
E7 equilibrium: firm 1 chooses the convention strategy and firm to the innovation strategy. Under conditions (C7) and (C7)’, there is a single uncovered market equilibrium for uninformed consumers, such that:
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Giraud-Héraud, E., Ponssard, JP., Desgagné, B.S. et al. The agro-food industry, public health, and environmental protection: investigating the Porter hypothesis in food regulation. Rev Agric Food Environ Stud 97, 127–140 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41130-016-0011-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41130-016-0011-8