Perceptions of Green User Entrepreneurs’ Performance—Is Sustainability an Asset or a Liability for Innovators?
Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: User entrepreneurs rely on regular consumers when starting their business, for example, when raising creative and financial support. This research examines regular consumers’ opinions with regard to the future business performance of green vs. non-green user entrepreneurs. We build on previous consumer behavior research on consumers’ performance perceptions. Specifically, consumers perceive products that use green, environmentally friendly technologies as having inferior performance compared to products that use traditional technologies. We investigate whether this so called “sustainability liability” effect can also be found in consumers’ perceptions of green user entrepreneurs’ performance. We ran an online scenario experiment with regular consumers who assessed the business performance of several (green vs. non-green) user entrepreneurs. Results reveal a “sustainability asset” effect for perceptions of green user entrepreneurs, such that consumers with strong environmental values perceived the business performance of green user entrepreneurs as superior compared to non-green user entrepreneurs. Consumers with weak environmental values perceived green and non-green entrepreneurs as equally performant. We discuss possible explanations of our findings. Furthermore, we propose potential consequences of our results both for consumers’ intentions to support user entrepreneurs as well as for user entrepreneurs’ motivation to engage in green innovations.
Source: Sustainability
DOI: 10.3390/su13063580
Authors: Jana Möller, Steffen Herm
Language: English
Subfield: Marketing
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,988
Funder: Freie Universität Berlin
OpenAlex ID: W3136119559