Work

When is Sustainability a Liability, and When Is It an Asset? Quality Inferences for Core and Peripheral Attributes

Year: 2020

Type: article

Abstract: Sustainable products offered in today’s marketplace are labelled with product-related green attributes (i.e. green core attributes) or non-product-related green attributes (i.e. green peripheral attributes). The current research investigates consumers’ inferences about a product’s functional quality when its core attributes are green (e.g. the ingredients) and when its peripheral attributes are green (e.g. the product packaging). Four experimental studies and an internal meta-analysis show that there is a sustainability liability effect in strength-dependent categories (for both core and peripheral attributes), and a sustainability asset effect in gentleness-dependent categories (for core attributes only). Our research contributes to the current understanding of how consumers make inferences about product quality when contemplating different types of green attributes. The findings have implications for how strength-dependent and gentleness-dependent products should be labelled as green.

Source: Journal of Business Ethics

DOI: 10.1007/s10551-019-04415-1

Authors: Siv Skard, Sveinung Jørgensen, Lars Jacob Tynes Pedersen

Institutions: Norwegian School of Economics, University of Inland Norway

Language: English

Topic: Environmental Sustainability in Business

Subfield: Marketing

Field: Business, Management and Accounting

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Responsible consumption and production

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,260