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Consumers’ Perception of Price Premiums for Greenwashed Products: An Abstract
Abstract
These days’ markets are flooded with products that manufacturers promote as green by adding one or two green attributes to a conventional product. They do so take advantage of consumers’ willingness to pay higher for green products. We examine consumers’ perceptions of such products through a theoretical lens. From a theoretical grounding we predict that:H1a: When consumers’ motivation to process information is high, both high-priced green and greenwashed products will be perceived high in monetary sacrifice.H1b: When consumers’ motivation to process information is low, in comparison to a green product, the high price of a greenwashed product will be perceived high in monetary sacrifice.H2: Perceptions of ethicality will mediate the evaluation of green and greenwashed products. Study 1 Sixty undergraduate students participated in the main study for extra credits. We randomly assigned participants to one of the four conditions in a 2 (motivation; low, high) × 2 (greenness, green, greenwashed) between-subjects design. The participants viewed the stimuli which consisted of an all-in-one printer with either one (greenwashed) or six (green) eco-friendly attributes and a fictitious brand name (Envyo) with a price of $399.99. We measured perceived monetary sacrifice, willingness to purchase the printer as well as three covariates. Results: An ANCOVA using individual preference for green products as a covariate showed a significant motivation x greenness effect on perceived sacrifice (F (1, 55) = 4.75, p < 0.05) with no significant effects of the covariates. Participants in the high motivation conditions perceived no significant difference between the two printers on perceived sacrifice (Mgreen = 7.4, Mgreenwashed = 7.1; F (1, 27) = 0.40, p > 0.50). In low motivation conditions, the perceptions of sacrifice were higher for the greenwashed printer (Mgreen = 5.8, Mgreenwashed = 7.0; F (1, 29) = 7.27, p < 0.05). Study 2a Using an implicit association task (IAT), this study demonstrated the implicit association of greenwashing (green) with unethicality (ethicality) of the firm (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998). Forty-three undergraduate students participated in the IAT task. Results: Response times were significantly faster in the hypothesis-consistent blocks than those in the hypothesis-inconsistent blocks (F (1, 39) = 41.44, p < 0.001, D = 100). Mean response time in the hypothesis-consistent categories was 1295 milliseconds, compared with 1727 milliseconds in the hypothesis-inconsistent categories. Study 2b In this study, we measured ethicality concerns explicitly to test for mediation. Fifty-nine participants from Amazon Mechanical Turk were randomly assigned to one of the two conditions in a single-factor (greenness, green vs. greenwashed) between-subjects design. We used the vignettes from Study 1 to manipulate greenness and to create a low motivation to process information. Results from mediation analysis indicate that greenness significantly predicted ethicality (β = 1.41; 95% CI = 0.63 to 2.20), and ethicality significantly predicted perceived sacrifice (β = −0.23; 95% CI = −0.45 to −0.02). As expected, ethicality mediated the relationship between level of greenness and perceptions of sacrifice (indirect effect = −0.33; 95% CI = −0.76 to −0.03).
Objetivo:
Realizar un análisis de la estructura intelectual del conocimiento sobre el greenwashing identificando las principales tendencias de investigación en la temática y una narrativa literaria que abarque una descripción sobre el concepto, los principales efectos y las estrategias contra el greenwashing.
Metodología:
Se realizó un análisis bibliométrico de la producción científica en las bases Web of Science (WoS) y Scopus, así como una revisión narrativa de la literatura. Los resultados bibliométricos se procesaron mediante la aplicación de plataformas y software como RStudio y VOSviewer.
Resultados principales:
Se analizaron 282 documentos que permitieron mapear la producción científica (autores, documentos, fuentes y filiaciones), presentar una descripción de la estructura intelectual y ofrecer una narración literaria sobre el concepto, clasificación, formas e impulsores, efectos y estrategias para luchar contra el greenwashing.
Conclusiones:
Se identificaron 3 clústeres temáticos sobre el estado actual de la investigación que ofrecen luces sobre las tendencias en la producción de conocimiento: sostenibilidad, responsabilidad social empresarial y green marketing. Los resultados del estudio serán de utilidad tanto para investigadores, como para empresarios y directivos empresariales, quienes tendrán la potencialidad de ampliar las fronteras del conocimiento sobre el tema y promover estrategias organizacionales para combatir esta práctica.
Many companies offer products with social benefits that are orthogonal to performance (e. g., green products). The present studies demonstrate that information about a company's intentions in designing the product plays an import role in consumers' evaluations. In particular, consumers are less likely to purchase a green product when they perceive that the company intentionally made the product better for the environment compared to when the same environmental benefit occurred as an unintended side effect. This result is explained by consumers' lay theories about resource allocation: intended (vs. unintended) green enhancements lead consumers to assume that the company diverted resources away from product quality, which in turn drives a reduction in purchase interest. The present studies also identify an important boundary condition based on the type of enhancement and show that the basic intended (vs. unintended) effect generalizes to other types of perceived tradeoffs, such as healthfulness and taste.
The authors construct a psychographic profile of the green consumer in terms of variables directly related to purchase behavior, such as price consciousness and general care in shopping, interest in new products, and brand loyalty. Additionally, they address attitudes toward advertising and media preferences. Data from 3264 respondents to the DDB Needham Life Style Study were analyzed. The results show the green consumer to be an opinion leader and a careful shopper who seeks information on products, including information from advertising, but also suggest that the green consumer is rather skeptical of advertising. The implications are that green consumers may be receptive to green marketing and advertising, but marketers should take care not to alienate them by using ambiguous or misleading messages.
Recent research in information economics has focused on signals as mechanisms to solve problems that arise under asymmetric information. A firm or individual credibly communicates the level of some unobservable element in a transaction by providing an observable signal. When applied to conveying product quality information, this issue is of particular interest to the discipline of marketing. In this article, the authors focus on the ways a firm may signal the unobservable quality of its products through several marketing-mix variables. The authors develop a typoloqy that classifies signals and discuss the available empirical evidence on the signaling properties of several marketing variables. They consider managerial implications of signaling and outline an agenda for future empirical research.
Concerns related to the environment are evident in the increasingly ecologically conscious marketplace. Using various statistical analyses, investigats the demographic, psychological and behavioral profiles of consumers who are willing to pay more for environmentally friendly products. Finds that this segment of consumers were more likely to be females, married and with at least one child living at home. They reported that today’s ecological problems are severe, that corporations do not act responsibly toward the environment and that behaving in an ecologically favorable fashion is important and not inconvenient. They place a high importance on security and warm relationships with others, and they often consider ecological issues when making a purchase. Managerial implications for green marketers and suggestions for future research are discussed.
In Exp I, 183 undergraduates read a persuasive message from a likable or unlikable communicator who presented 6 or 2 arguments on 1 of 2 topics. High involvement (HI) Ss anticipated discussing the message topic at a future experimental session, whereas low-involvement (LI) Ss anticipated discussing a different topic. For HI Ss, opinion change was significantly greater given 6 arguments but was unaffected by communicator likability. For LI Ss, opinion change was significantly greater given a likable communicator but was unaffected by the argument's manipulation. In Exp II with 80 similar Ss, HI Ss showed slightly greater opinion change when exposed to 5 arguments from an unlikable (vs 1 argument from a likable) communicator, whereas LI Ss exhibited significantly greater persuasion in response to 1 argument from a likable (vs 5 arguments from an unlikable) communicator. Findings support the idea that HI leads message recipients to employ a systematic information processing strategy in which message-based cognitions mediate persuasion, whereas LI leads recipients to use a heuristic processing strategy in which simple decision rules mediate persuasion. Support was also obtained for the hypothesis that content- vs source-mediated opinion change would result in greater persistence. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2004 APA, all rights reserved)
Manufacturers are increasingly producing and promoting sustainable products (i.e., products that have a positive social and/or environmental impact). However, relatively little is known about how product sustainability impacts consumers’ preferences. We propose that sustainability may not always be an asset, even if most consumers care about social and environmental issues. The degree to which sustainability enhances preference depends on the type of benefit that consumers most value for the product category in question. In our research, we demonstrate that consumers associate higher product ethicality with gentleness-related attributes and lower product ethicality with strength-related attributes. As a consequence of these associations, the positive effect of product sustainability on consumer preferences is reduced when strength-related attributes are valued, sometimes even resulting in preferences for less sustainable product alternatives (i.e., the “sustainability liability”). On the other hand, when gentleness-related attributes are valued, sustainability enhances preference. In addition, we show that the potential negative impact of sustainability on product preferences can be attenuated using explicit cues about product strength.
Why do people purchase proenvironmental "green" products? We argue that buying such products can be construed as altruistic, since green products often cost more and are of lower quality than their conventional counterparts, but green goods benefit the environment for everyone. Because biologists have observed that altruism might function as a "costly signal" associated with status, we examined in 3 experiments how status motives influenced desire for green products. Activating status motives led people to choose green products over more luxurious nongreen products. Supporting the notion that altruism signals one's willingness and ability to incur costs for others' benefit, status motives increased desire for green products when shopping in public (but not private) and when green products cost more (but not less) than nongreen products. Findings suggest that status competition can be used to promote proenvironmental behavior.
Building on past research, this article illustrates when a price-quality relationship holds in the presence of multiple extrinsic cues. When intrinsic information is scarce, the relationship is more pronounced when a positive price cue is paired with a positive second cue (e.g., strong warranty, positive country of origin, or strong brand). When the two cues are inconsistent, consumers find the negative cue more salient and overweight it in their evaluations. This interaction is moderated by the presence of abundant levels of intrinsic attribute information. Our predictions are replicated across five studies, and the underlying process is supported. (c) 2005 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..
An implicit association test (IAT) measures differential association of 2 target concepts with an attribute. The 2 concepts appear in a 2-choice task (2-choice task (e.g., flower vs. insect names), and the attribute in a 2nd task (e.g., pleasant vs. unpleasant words for an evaluation attribute). When instructions oblige highly associated categories (e.g., flower + pleasant) to share a response key, performance is faster than when less associated categories (e.g., insect & pleasant) share a key. This performance difference implicitly measures differential association of the 2 concepts with the attribute. In 3 experiments, the IAT was sensitive to (a) near-universal evaluative differences (e.g., flower vs. insect), (b) expected individual differences in evaluative associations (Japanese + pleasant vs. Korean + pleasant for Japanese vs. Korean subjects), and (c) consciously disavowed evaluative differences (Black + pleasant vs. White + pleasant for self-described unprejudiced White subjects).
In reporting Implicit Association Test (IAT) results, researchers have most often used scoring conventions described in the first publication of the IAT (A.G. Greenwald, D.E. McGhee, & J.L.K. Schwartz, 1998). Demonstration IATs available on the Internet have produced large data sets that were used in the current article to evaluate alternative scoring procedures. Candidate new algorithms were examined in terms of their (a) correlations with parallel self-report measures, (b) resistance to an artifact associated with speed of responding, (c) internal consistency, (d) sensitivity to known influences on IAT measures, and (e) resistance to known procedural influences. The best-performing measure incorporates data from the IAT's practice trials, uses a metric that is calibrated by each respondent's latency variability, and includes a latency penalty for errors. This new algorithm strongly outperforms the earlier (conventional) procedure.
An increasing body of research addresses consumers' green product purchasing behavior, and yet little work has examined how consumers form perceptions of the greenness of products in the first place. Drawing on theories of attribute centrality (the degree to which an attribute is integral in defining an object), the authors argue that products with identical environmental benefits will be judged more or less green depending on whether the benefit stems from a central versus a peripheral attribute. They present four studies that support the hypotheses and explore factors that influence the effect of central attributes, including product category membership and integration of the green attribute with other elements of the product. They include controls for firm motivations and importance of the attribute to the individual consumer. The authors conclude the article with managerial and public policy implications, such as advice for firms on where to make green investments for maximum consumer impact and insight for public policy makers on the need for consumer assistance in objectively evaluating products with identical environmental benefits that achieve those benefits in different ways.
Existing theoretical models of individual ethical decision making in organizations place little or no emphasis on characteristics of the ethical issue itself. This article (a) proposes an issue-contingent model containing a new set of variables called moral intensity; (b) using concepts, theory, and evidence derived largely from social psychology, argues that moral intensity influences every component of moral decision making and behavior; (c) offers four research propositions; and (d) discusses implications of the theory.
This article discusses the need for more satisfactory implicit measures in consumer psychology and assesses the theoretical foundations, validity, and value of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) as a measure of implicit consumer social cognition. Study 1 demonstrates the IAT's sen-sitivity to explicit individual differences in brand attitudes, ownership, and usage frequency, and shows their correlations with IAT-based measures of implicit brand attitudes and brand re-lationship strength. In Study 2, the contrast between explicit and implicit measures of attitude toward the ad for sportswear advertisements portraying African American (Black) and Euro-pean American (White) athlete-spokespersons revealed different patterns of responses to ex-plicit and implicit measures in Black and White respondents. These were explained in terms of self-presentation biases and system justification theory. Overall, the results demonstrate that the IAT enhances our understanding of consumer responses, particularly when consumers are either unable or unwilling to identify the sources of influence on their behaviors or opinions.
Sumario: I. Prices and demand -- II. Developing internal costs for pricing -- III. Pricing decisions and price administration -- IV. Special topics on pricing.
Ss received consensus information that was either congruent or incongruent with the valence of persuasive message content. In Experiment 1 Ss believed that their processing task was either important or unimportant whereas in Experiment 2 all Ss believed that their task was unimportant. In accord with the heuristic-systematic model's sufficiency principle, high-task-importance Ss exhibited a great deal of systematic processing regardless of congruency, whereas low-importance Ss processed systematically only when they received incongruent messages; in the congruent conditions heuristic processing dominated. Attitude data generally reflected these processing differences and confirmed the additivity and attenuation assumptions of the model. The utility of the sufficiency principle for understanding motivation for elaborative processing and the relevance of the findings to understanding the processing and judgmental effects of expectancy disconfirmation are discussed.
Social behavior is ordinarily treated as being under conscious (if not always thoughtful) control. However, considerable evidence now supports the view that social behavior often operates in an implicit or unconscious fashion. The identifying feature of implicit cognition is that past experience influences judgment in a fashion not introspectively known by the actor. The present conclusion--that attitudes, self-esteem, and stereotypes have important implicit modes of operation--extends both the construct validity and predictive usefulness of these major theoretical constructs of social psychology. Methodologically, this review calls for increased use of indirect measures--which are imperative in studies of implicit cognition. The theorized ordinariness of implicit stereotyping is consistent with recent findings of discrimination by people who explicitly disavow prejudice. The finding that implicit cognitive effects are often reduced by focusing judges' attention on their judgment task provides a basis for evaluating applications (such as affirmative action) aimed at reducing such unintended discrimination.
The extent to which decision-makers are willing and able to purposely expend cognitive effort in resolving ethical issues is an important area of study in the ethical decision-making literature. In this article we describe the role that cognitive expenditure is expected to play in the ethical decision-making process by presenting an integrated model of ethical decision-making. This model provides the foundation for a series of research propositions suggesting the manner in which purposive cognitive expenditure is expected to influence the ethical decision process and, ultimately, the likelihood of engaging in moral behavior.
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