IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jbrese/v76y2017icp89-97.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Influencing consumers to choose environment friendly offerings: Evidence from field experiments

Author

Listed:
  • Kristensson, Per
  • Wästlund, Erik
  • Söderlund, Magnus

Abstract

The objective of this article is to examine a set of ways to influence consumer behavior toward making more environmentally friendly choices. We conducted three different studies to investigate (1) what consumers think would influence their behavior, (2) how several question-based verbal influence strategies nudge consumer behavior in one direction or another, and (3) how question-based written influence strategies influence consumer behavior. The findings reveal a discrepancy between what consumers think would influence behavior and what actually does influence it. In addition, under all verbal and written experimental conditions, influence strategies led to consumer change toward environmentally friendly offerings compared with alternative non-environment friendly offerings. The discussion highlights possible explanations for the results, managerial implications, the study's limitations, and suggestions for future research, with a special emphasis on research into factors that can change consumer behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Kristensson, Per & Wästlund, Erik & Söderlund, Magnus, 2017. "Influencing consumers to choose environment friendly offerings: Evidence from field experiments," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 89-97.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:76:y:2017:i:c:p:89-97
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.03.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296317300905
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jbusres.2017.03.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Robertson, L.S. & Kelley, A.B. & O'Neill, B. & Wixom, C.W. & Eiswirth, R.S. & Haddon Jr., W., 1974. "A controlled study of the effect of television messages on safety belt use," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 64(11), pages 1071-1080.
    2. Ajzen, Icek, 1991. "The theory of planned behavior," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 50(2), pages 179-211, December.
    3. Fombelle, Paul W. & Sirianni, Nancy J. & Goldstein, Noah J. & Cialdini, Robert B., 2015. "Let them all eat cake: Providing VIP services without the cost of exclusion for non-VIP customers," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 68(9), pages 1987-1996.
    4. Aradhna Krishna, 1992. "The Normative Impact of Consumer Price Expectations for Multiple Brands on Consumer Purchase Behavior," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 11(3), pages 266-286.
    5. Söderlund, Magnus & Mattsson, Jan, 2015. "Merely asking the customer to recommend has an impact on word-of-mouth activity," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 27(C), pages 80-89.
    6. Friestad, Marian & Wright, Peter, 1994. "The Persuasion Knowledge Model: How People Cope with Persuasion Attempts," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 21(1), pages 1-31, June.
    7. He, Yi & Chen, Qimei & Alden, Dana L., 2012. "Consumption in the public eye: The influence of social presence on service experience," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 302-310.
    8. Hartline, Michael D. & Jones, Keith C., 1996. "Employee performance cues in a hotel service environment: Influence on perceived service quality, value, and word-of-mouth intentions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 35(3), pages 207-215, March.
    9. Chris Arnot & Peter C. Boxall & Sean B. Cash, 2006. "Do Ethical Consumers Care About Price? A Revealed Preference Analysis of Fair Trade Coffee Purchases," Canadian Journal of Agricultural Economics/Revue canadienne d'agroeconomie, Canadian Agricultural Economics Society/Societe canadienne d'agroeconomie, vol. 54(4), pages 555-565, December.
    10. Hill, Krista M. & Fombelle, Paul W. & Sirianni, Nancy J., 2016. "Shopping under the influence of curiosity: How retailers use mystery to drive purchase motivation," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 1028-1034.
    11. Levitt, Steven D. & List, John A., 2009. "Field experiments in economics: The past, the present, and the future," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 1-18, January.
    12. Verbeke, Willem & Bagozzi, Richard P. & Belschak, Frank D., 2016. "The role of status and leadership style in sales contests: A natural field experiment," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(10), pages 4112-4120.
    13. T. M. Wilkinson, 2013. "Nudging and Manipulation," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 61(2), pages 341-355, June.
    14. repec:feb:natura:0061 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Katie Baca-Motes & Amber Brown & Ayelet Gneezy & Elizabeth A. Keenan & Leif D. Nelson, 2013. "Commitment and Behavior Change: Evidence from the Field," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 39(5), pages 1070-1084.
    16. Alain d’Astous & Amélie Legendre, 2009. "Understanding Consumers’ Ethical Justifications: A Scale for Appraising Consumers’ Reasons for Not Behaving Ethically," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 87(2), pages 255-268, June.
    17. Steven D. Levitt & John A. List, 2007. "What Do Laboratory Experiments Measuring Social Preferences Reveal About the Real World?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 153-174, Spring.
    18. William Young & Kumju Hwang & Seonaidh McDonald & Caroline J. Oates, 2010. "Sustainable consumption: green consumer behaviour when purchasing products," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(1), pages 20-31.
    19. Herr, Paul M, 1989. "Priming Price: Prior Knowledge and Context Effects," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 16(1), pages 67-75, June.
    20. Spangenberg, Eric R. & Sprott, David E. & Grohmann, Bianca & Tracy, Daniel L., 2006. "Gender-congruent ambient scent influences on approach and avoidance behaviors in a retail store," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 59(12), pages 1281-1287, November.
    21. Lindström, Annika & Berg, Hanna & Nordfält, Jens & Roggeveen, Anne L. & Grewal, Dhruv, 2016. "Does the presence of a mannequin head change shopping behavior?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 517-524.
    22. Braun, Kathryn A, 1999. "Postexperience Advertising Effects on Consumer Memory," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 25(4), pages 319-334, March.
    23. repec:feb:artefa:0087 is not listed on IDEAS
    24. Janssen, Loes & Fennis, Bob M. & Pruyn, Ad Th.H. & Vohs, Kathleen D., 2008. "The path of least resistance: Regulatory resource depletion and the effectiveness of social influence techniques," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 61(10), pages 1041-1045, October.
    25. Siegel, M. & Biener, L., 2000. "The impact of an antismoking media campaign on progression to established smoking: Results of a longitudinal youth study," American Journal of Public Health, American Public Health Association, vol. 90(3), pages 380-386.
    26. Motes, William H. & Woodside, Arch G., 2001. "Purchase experiments of extra-ordinary and regular influence strategies using artificial and real brands," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 15-35, July.
    27. Tybout, Alice M & Yalch, Richard F, 1980. "The Effect of Experience: A Matter of Salience?," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 6(4), pages 406-413, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Konuk, Faruk Anıl & Otterbring, Tobias, 2024. "The dark side of going green: Dark triad traits predict organic consumption through virtue signaling, status signaling, and praise from others," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    2. Aparna Venugopal & Dhirendra Shukla, 2019. "Identifying consumers' engagement with renewable energy," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(1), pages 53-63, January.
    3. Wang, Haizhong & Shen, Manqiong & (Amy) Song, Yiping & Phau, Ian, 2020. "Do up-displayed eco-friendly products always perform better? The moderating role of psychological distance," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 198-212.
    4. Majid Ghorbani & Liyan Xuan, 2018. "Challenging Ingrained Thoughts? The Joint Effect of Stereotypes and Awareness of Related Information on Pro-Environmental Behavior in China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-20, June.
    5. Loebnitz, Natascha & Frank, Phillip & Otterbring, Tobias, 2022. "Stairway to organic heaven: The impact of social and temporal distance in print ads," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 139(C), pages 1044-1057.
    6. Preeti Narwal & J. K. Nayak & Shivam Rai, 2022. "Assessing Customers' Moral Disengagement from Reciprocity Concerns in Participative Pricing," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(2), pages 537-554, June.
    7. Otterbring, Tobias, 2021. "Peer presence promotes popular choices: A “Spicy†field study on social influence and brand choice," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 61(C).
    8. Hung M. Nguyen & George Onofrei & Dothang Truong & Simon Lockrey, 2020. "Customer green orientation and process innovation alignment: A configuration approach in the global manufacturing industry," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(6), pages 2498-2513, September.
    9. Kolesnik, N., 2023. "Implementation of the concept of sustainable development in food retail: Latent semantic analysis of SMM communication 2015-2021," Journal of the New Economic Association, New Economic Association, vol. 60(3), pages 79-102.
    10. Saleh Md Arman & Cecilia Mark-Herbert, 2022. "Ethical Pro-Environmental Self-Identity Practice: The Case of Second-Hand Products," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(4), pages 1-18, February.
    11. Carmen Bălan, 2020. "How Does Retail Engage Consumers in Sustainable Consumption? A Systematic Literature Review," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(1), pages 1-25, December.
    12. Gidlöf, Kerstin & Lahm, Erik Stoltenberg & Wallin, Annika & Otterbring, Tobias, 2021. "Eco depletion: The impact of hunger on prosociality by means of environmentally friendly attitudes and behavior," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    13. Han-Shen Chen & Bi-Kun Tsai & Chi-Ming Hsieh, 2018. "The Effects of Perceived Barriers on Innovation Resistance of Hydrogen-Electric Motorcycles," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(6), pages 1-15, June.
    14. Stephan Hankammer & Robin Kleer & Frank T. Piller, 2021. "Sustainability nudges in the context of customer co-design for consumer electronics," Journal of Business Economics, Springer, vol. 91(6), pages 897-933, August.
    15. Otterbring, Tobias & Shams, Poja, 2019. "Mirror, mirror, on the menu: Visual reminders of overweight stimulate healthier meal choices," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 177-183.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Veronika Andorfer & Ulf Liebe, 2012. "Research on Fair Trade Consumption—A Review," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 106(4), pages 415-435, April.
    2. Cristina Longo & Avi Shankar & Peter Nuttall, 2019. "“It’s Not Easy Living a Sustainable Lifestyle”: How Greater Knowledge Leads to Dilemmas, Tensions and Paralysis," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 154(3), pages 759-779, February.
    3. Lackner, Mario & Sonnabend, Hendrik, 2021. "Coping with advantageous inequity—Field evidence from professional penalty kicking," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    4. John A. List, 2024. "Optimally generate policy-based evidence before scaling," Nature, Nature, vol. 626(7999), pages 491-499, February.
    5. Omar Al-Ubaydli & John A. List, 2019. "How natural field experiments have enhanced our understanding of unemployment," Nature Human Behaviour, Nature, vol. 3(1), pages 33-39, January.
    6. Bouma, J.A. & Nguyen, Binh & van der Heijden, Eline & Dijk, J.J., 2018. "Analysing Group Contract Design Using a Lab and a Lab-in-the-Field Threshold Public Good Experiment," Discussion Paper 2018-049, Tilburg University, Center for Economic Research.
    7. Hannes Koppel & Günther Schulze, 2013. "The Importance of the Indirect Transfer Mechanism for Consumer Willingness to Pay for Fair Trade Products—Evidence from a Natural Field Experiment," Journal of Consumer Policy, Springer, vol. 36(4), pages 369-387, December.
    8. Liobikienė, Genovaitė & Mandravickaitė, Justina & Bernatonienė, Jurga, 2016. "Theory of planned behavior approach to understand the green purchasing behavior in the EU: A cross-cultural study," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 125(C), pages 38-46.
    9. Ragna Nilssen & Geoff Bick & Russell Abratt, 2019. "Comparing the relative importance of sustainability as a consumer purchase criterion of food and clothing in the retail sector," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 26(1), pages 71-83, January.
    10. Fredrik Carlsson & Jorge García & Åsa Löfgren, 2010. "Conformity and the Demand for Environmental Goods," Environmental & Resource Economics, Springer;European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, vol. 47(3), pages 407-421, November.
    11. Leyla Abassi & Christine Gonzalez, 2017. "Le Consommateur Face A L'Ecologie: Indifferent, Reactant Ou Sensible?," Post-Print hal-01556238, HAL.
    12. Paolo Antonetti & Stan Maklan, 2014. "Feelings that Make a Difference: How Guilt and Pride Convince Consumers of the Effectiveness of Sustainable Consumption Choices," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 124(1), pages 117-134, September.
    13. Hallsworth, Michael & List, John A. & Metcalfe, Robert D. & Vlaev, Ivo, 2017. "The behavioralist as tax collector: Using natural field experiments to enhance tax compliance," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 148(C), pages 14-31.
    14. Armantier, Olivier & Boly, Amadou, 2011. "A controlled field experiment on corruption," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(8), pages 1072-1082.
    15. Eszter Czibor & David Jimenez‐Gomez & John A. List, 2019. "The Dozen Things Experimental Economists Should Do (More of)," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 86(2), pages 371-432, October.
    16. John List & Sally Sadoff & Mathis Wagner, 2011. "So you want to run an experiment, now what? Some simple rules of thumb for optimal experimental design," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 14(4), pages 439-457, November.
    17. Dias, José António & Dias, José G. & Lages, Carmen, 2017. "Can negative characters in soap operas be positive for product placement?," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 125-132.
    18. Golovacheva, K., 2015. "Consumer response to unit price increase: The role of pricing tactics and consumer knowledge," Working Papers 6421, Graduate School of Management, St. Petersburg State University.
    19. Chandler, Dana & Kapelner, Adam, 2013. "Breaking monotony with meaning: Motivation in crowdsourcing markets," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 123-133.
    20. Taneja, Shilpa & Ali, Liaqat, 2021. "Determinants of customers’ intentions towards environmentally sustainable banking: Testing the structural model," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:76:y:2017:i:c:p:89-97. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jbusres .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.