ABSTRACT
Consequently, because of limited human processing capacity, agents need to allocate their attention among competitive sources. The consumers' attention becomes the scarcest resource instead of information. Once they devote their attention to given information, they may need to mitigate information asymmetry. Herbert Simon6 (1995) recognizes that information symmetry is not enough to ensure market efficiency: "What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention, and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it." Indeed, consumers have less time and limited abilities to process increasing information flows. At first glance, competition for consumers' attention occurs in rich informational context, because the label itself provides too much information or competition between several sources capable of capturing consumers' attention. New information and communication technologies reinforce this situation by providing huge amounts of information. In a well-documented study on different ecolabels, Wynne (1994, p. 95) claims that "simply making information available to consumers in no way assures that they will process it". He shows that environmental report cards7 establish symmetrical but useless information because consumers are overloaded by such amounts of information. One must distinguish between "information provision" and "information impact", because there is no one to one relationship between information provided and the impact, if any, of this information on the recipient". Recently, the German Federal Environmental Agency
have stressed the negative effects of competition between eco-claims and other impulses for attention: "The flood of other ecolabels also poses a problem for the first environmental label [Blue Angel]. A great deal of packaging is meanwhile emblazoned with half-a-dozen badges all of them courting the customer's favor. Attracting attention has become more difficult. (...) The average person is confronted daily with 3000 advertising impulses" (German Federal Environmental Agency, 20028). An interesting question, but out of scope of this paper, is to identify the specific attributes that tend to be associated with such overload.
