Growing consumer concern for sustainability has increased the adoption of sustainable packaging in last-mile fresh-meal delivery services. Despite this trend, limited research explains why consumers are willing to pay a premium for sustainable packaging. This study aims to predict consumers' willingness to pay (WTP) for sustainable packaging by examining the role of key psychographic and perception-based factors.
Survey data were collected from 808 consumers using last-mile fresh-meal delivery services. To address the ordinal nature of attitudinal data and improve predictive robustness, a collapsed Likert-scale approach was employed. Machine learning classification techniques (logistic regression, random forest, gradient boosting and support vector machines) were applied to model the relationship between WTP and eco-consciousness, price sensitivity, brand trust, perceived packaging sustainability, perceived packaging quality and perceived packaging innovation.
Gradient Boosting emerged as the best-performing model, achieving the highest predictive accuracy and macro-F1 score. The results reveal that price sensitivity and eco-consciousness are the most influential predictors of consumers' WTP for sustainable packaging. Perceived packaging sustainability and perceived packaging quality also play significant roles, while brand trust exerts a partial yet meaningful influence on premium payment decisions.
The findings provide actionable guidance for marketers and platform managers in the fresh-meal delivery sector. Emphasizing sustainability benefits alongside packaging quality, while addressing consumer price sensitivity, can enhance perceived value and support premium pricing strategies for sustainable packaging solutions.
This study advances consumer marketing research by combining psychographic drivers of sustainable consumption with machine learning-based prediction. It also demonstrates the value of collapsed Likert-scale data for modelling consumers' WTP, offering both methodological and managerial contributions to sustainability-driven marketing decisions.
