An investigation of two remedial measures for retailers to address the impact of disease threat on sustainable consumption: A moderated moderated mediation model

As many sustainable products in the circular economy are made from used material, concerns over contagion could render them unappealing. Recent studies verified this conjecture, but they did not identify practical remedial measures to help retailers address consumers' contagion concerns. We examine two remedial measures: including the store owner's identity or a sanitization message in the product description. We examine the effectiveness of these remedial measures for refurbished, repurposed, and recycled products; we also consider these products when they are used close to versus away from the body. Through two experiments, we find significant moderating effects of each remedial measure on the moderating effect of disease threat. The remedial measures significantly impact a sustainable product's perceived quality the most, in terms of how perceived quality is affected by disease threat. We find that repurposed products are most sensitive to contagion concerns. We show that products used close to and away from the body can be susceptible to contagion concerns. The findings suggest that consumers can have an exaggerated response to disease threats. Our study contributes to the circular economy by identifying the contexts where remedial measures can overcome the consumer's contagion concerns about sustainable products. By verifying several conjectures of evolution theory and by providing the first examination of how repurposed products are affected by disease threat, the study also contributes to a more comprehensive account of how consumers react to contagion.