Refine
Document Type
- Article (4)
- Doctoral Thesis (1)
Language
- English (5)
Keywords
- Autonomy support (1)
- Eco-friendly purchase (1)
- Economic incentive (1)
- Empowerment (1)
- Green advertisement (1)
- Locus of control (1)
- Organic purchase (1)
- Recycling behavior (1)
- Responsibility attribution (1)
- Self-determination (1)
Institute
Previous research reported conflicting results on the effectiveness of economic incentives versus green appeals for promoting pro-environmental behavior and neglected the possibility of combining both as well as country differences. Through online experiments in Germany, the USA and China, we tested a monetary reward for recycling that is only redeemable for eco-friendly products – a “green reward” – in comparison to a standard reward (redeemable for any product) and a green appeal (highlighting environmental impact). In China, green rewards significantly increased recycling intentions via introjected motivation. In the USA, rewards improved intentions mainly via extrinsic motivation. In Germany, green appeals appeared to be the best strategy. Extrinsic rewards are expected to reduce perceived autonomy support, but only did so in the USA. Differences between countries are identified with regard to “crowding-out” of internalized motivation. It appears that under some conditions an environmental purpose can neutralize negative effects of extrinsic incentives.
This research aims to investigate the potential of consumer empowerment, the activation of consumers’ perceived power over companies, to achieve improved advertising effects for organic food compared to only communicating ecological benefits (classical green appeals). Two online experiments were conducted to analyze the ad effectiveness for consumers’ responses including their evaluations of the company and purchase intentions (nStudy1 = 294; nStudy2 = 457). Results indicate that green empowerment ads reach overall better performance to increase people’s perceived customer orientation and purchase intentions compared to green appeals, while similar effects are identified for perceived corporate environmental responsibility. Empowerment tactics are especially effective when consumers perceive the supplier to be a larger, high-resource company compared to a smaller, low-resource one. The significant effects of perceived corporate resources also indicates that smaller companies should use differentiated ad strategies depending on if they intend to enhance consumers’ purchase intentions or their environmental reputation.
More sustainable private consumption is necessary to achieve the common goal of sustainable development. This dissertation deals with the underlying socio-psychological determinants of sustainable consumer behavior in different domains, based on which promotion measures are recommended to companies and policymakers. Among others, I discuss consumers’ perceptions of their responsibilities for sustainability in contrast to their expectations on governments’ and companies’ contributions. Furthermore, I shed light on a main barrier of sustainable consumption that most consumers support sustainability but their behaviors are, to a decisive extent, driven by other motives such as customer-oriented services or offered incentives, which primarily benefit consumers themselves instead of the sustainability agenda. To tackle this barrier, I develop several promotion measures based on activating psychological concepts such as empowerment and self-determination in a single or multi-country setting. Results of this dissertation serve to more effectively understand consumers’ concerns with sustainable consumption and to add new perspectives to improve tactics to promote sustainable behaviors.
Many people think that only powerful institutions are effective to combat eironmental problems, especially in government-guided countries such as China. This study contrasts people’s beliefs in their own abilities to improve the eironment to their perceptions of other powers (e.g. government, corporations, higher powers, and earth-cycles). Previous research explored the impact of internal and external control beliefs on individuals’ pro-eironmental behavior mostly separately in developed Western countries. Since China’s cultural and sociopolitical eironment significantly differs from that of Western countries, we develop and test an integrated model of eironmental locus of control (ELOC) to enlighten possible interactions and simultaneous effects in China. As expected, results indicate that internal ELOC generates positive effects on Chinese people’s behaviors. But contrary to our predictions, external ELOC is positively correlated with internal factors and also positively influences behaviors. The belief in one’s own abilities outperforms the belief in others to translate the confidence into reported behaviors. Nevertheless, Chinese perceive a higher level of governmental and corporate responsibility relative to their own eironmental impacts which is driven by Confucian values (i.e. group orientation, belief in hierarchy). Compared to relatively consistent internal ELOC, the perceptions of most external ELOC factors significantly differ among provinces by levels of GDP per capita. Promotional programs should stress the individual’s significance through daily behaviors in specific ways such as green purchase, activism, advocate (e.g. persuasion of friends), and recycling. Communicating the impact of powerful institutions might not necessarily trigger responsibility diffusion, but seems to promote the sense of shared responsibility.