Food waste is a major sustainable development problem in the world, and the promotion of ugly food may help address this issue. According to cue utilization theory and the VAB model, the primary purpose of this research is to investigate the role of green packaging in ugly food with multiple internal and external cues. A conceptual model with eight hypotheses are proposed. Conclusion, contributions of study and research limitations are finally shown.

Food waste is a major sustainable development problem in the world, and the promotion of ugly food may help address this issue. According to cue utilization theory and the VAB model, the primary purpose of this research is to investigate the role of green packaging in ugly food with multiple internal and external cues. A conceptual model with eight hypotheses are proposed. Conclusion, contributions of study and research limitations are finally shown.

Along with the rapid development of China’s economy, the consumption of China’s consumer has also been increased. This research explores whether China’s consumers concern about product’s packaging as much as product’s quality and brand influence. It also discusses whether the product packaging is marked with recyclable logo on it and whether the packaging is harmful to human health. China’s express industry is taken as an example in this research. According to the statistics by State Post Bureau, the total amount of China’s express business was 14 billion packages in 2014, and the volume was substantially increased to 20.67 billion packages. If each package was estimated as 0.2 kg, more than 4 million tons of packaging waste would come from 20 billion packages. Recyclable packaging material would reduce the amount of waste and alleviate environmental pollution. However, whether customers are willing to pay for it is a problem. Product packaging can’t only attract customers from the visual perspective, but needs to be developed through multi-dimensional sensory conveying method. The product itself can be expressed directly through simple packaging. For instance, the Apple Inc. does not only shift consumer’s thoughts on mobile phone, meanwhile, it makes a change on high-end brand mobile phone packaging for China’s consumers. Prior to the emergence of Apple mobile phone, high-end mobile phone brand was adopted luxurious and sophisticated packaging method. With the entrance of Apple into China’s market, the unique style of Apple’s simplicity is followed by other mobile phone brands. This research is elaborated on China’s consumer’s reaction on innovative ecological packaging and their cognition to food packaging security. It also gives inspiration to enterprises how to catch consumer’s eyeballs through innovative ecological packaging and further make enterprises access to benefits.