Self-enhancing green consumer behavior

• In the last few decades, the topic of environmental sustainability has received much attention within the marketing literature (Powell, 2011, Leonidou et al., 2013). As our world faces many environmental challenges, both large and small, the thought that part of the solution to these problems is in the consumption based arena has become more popular. To steer toward a more environmentally sustainable consumption is thus seen as desirable for many actors in society. However, while the concepts of green, sustainable, or environmental marketing have existed for several decades, the actual results of these initiatives are discouraging from both research and sustainability perspectives (Crane, 2000). There is a vast " attitude - behavior gap" (Moraes et al., 2 012, Carrington et al., 2010, Carrington et al., 2014) which means that although consumers profess to be positively disposed towards organic products, they do not act accordingly. Traditionally, research in this field has focused on how products’ functiona l benefits and consumers’ values and norms affect green consumer behavior (Salazar et al., 2013) . There is however an emerging understanding that consumers may seek more than functional value from their environmentally friendly brands, value like e.g. stat us (Griskevicius et al., 2010) and identity (Sexton and Sexton, 2011). Thus, for green products to be successful it may not be sufficient to only to be good; they must also make their user seem good. While building on the symbolic/expressive meaning of consumption is a commonly accepted idea within brand building (e.g. Park et al., 1986, Aaker, 1997, Fang et al., 2012) , it has received limited attention within the green consumer behavior domain. We propose that from the symbolic consumption perspective, environmentally friendly products that are consumed conspicuously should represent greater value than those that are consumed inconspicuously. Against this background, the purpose of this paper is to investigate if consumers choose environmentally friendly options to a greater extent if the consumption setting is public rather than private consumption situations.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Ekonomi och näringsliv -- Företagsekonomi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Economics and Business -- Business Administration (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Green consumer behavior

symbolic consumption

self-image congruity

Publikations- och innehållstyp

vet (ämneskategori)

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