# Drivers, Barriers and Benefits of the EU Ecolabel in European Companies' Perception
## EU Ecolabel Drivers, Benefits and Barriers: Evidence from the EU Ecolabel Evaluation Survey
### Drivers  
The results of our study are in line with the findings in existing literature and, particularly, with the 2006 EVER study. More precisely, results show that around 60 percent of the Licence holders adopt the EU Ecolabel as a tool to respond to market pressure deriving from both important customers (including retailers) and consumers, and thus increase sales and improve their overall market competitiveness (Figure 5). A very similar picture emerges from the analysis of the responses of the surveyed non-license holding companies, although some differences may be highlighted. Indeed, results reveal a slightly different pattern with respect to companies that have adopted the EU Ecolabel. Once again, market factors are demonstrated as being the main drivers that may push them to apply for the EU Ecolabel, improve the competitiveness or market positioning of the product and improve their capabilities to respond to customers/consumers request are at the top of the drivers list. However, two further issues fall into the group of critical motivations for applying for the EU Ecolabel: the willingness to better manage specific environmental issues within the company and to increase customer/consumer interest and satisfaction.  
These results suggest that companies are operating in a framework of increased competitiveness, where the capability to respond to an increased pressure arising from growingly environmentally aware final consumers, intermediate customers and retailers is seen as a strategic lever when aiming at improving market positioning. It is important to note that some companies specified also that, when important customers pushed them to apply for the EU Ecolabel, these were often big retailers. As retailers are the interface between the upstream supply chain and the final consumer, a sort of \"gatekeeper\", they are held accountable by consumers and stakeholders for product issues such as chemicals of concern, excessive packaging and sourcing responsibly produced materials and products. Consequently, retailers emerge as important actors in driving companies' environmental policies (and consumers' purchasing choices). Besides the differences between License holders and Non-License holders in the order in which the two groups of respondents rated their answers (emphasized in Figure 5), the statistical significance of these differences was analyzed by performing the Mann-Whitney U test. It is a nonparametric test, which does not require normal distributions, and which tests the dependence of two samples that come from the same population by comparing their mean [13]. As it can be seen from Table 1, the test confirms that the two groups of respondents attribute the same importance to the investigated drivers, with the only exception of the \"supply chain management\".  
Figure 5: Licence holder (**right**) and Non-license holder (**left**) responses to the consideration of drivers to use the EU Ecolabel.  
If we analyze the results taking into account companies' size (Figure 6), the picture that emerges is very similar to that given overall. SME and Larger Licence holders consider market factors as significant drivers for applying for the EU Ecolabel. However, it must be noted that SMEs identified the ability to respond to a specific request made by an important customer or retailer as only the third driver in order of importance. In contrast, larger companies see this driver as the major motivation for applying for the EU Ecolabel, followed by the desire to increase sales, improve products' competitiveness on the market and access public procurement opportunities.