Being Innovative While Being Green: An Experimental Inquiry into How Consumers Respond to Eco‐Innovative Product Designs

Abstract

Eco-innovations are an effective way for companies to strategically align themselves with customers' growing environmental concerns. Despite their crucial role, scant research has focused on eco-innovative product designs. Drawing from the sustainability and innovation literature, this article proposes that in the design of an eco-innovation, its degree of innovativeness, level of eco-friendliness, and detachability significantly affect consumers' adoption intentions. This article develops various conceptual models tested through three independent online experiments with U.S. consumers. The findings support the hypotheses and provide useful insights into the underlying mechanisms of how and why consumers respond to eco-innovative product designs across various high-tech product categories. Specifically, the results show (1) a positive effect of innovativeness degrees of eco-innovative attributes on consumers' perceptions of product eco-friendliness and on their adoption intentions as well as a significant moderating role of consumers' need for cognition (Study 1); (2) a positive influence of eco-friendliness levels of eco-innovative attributes on consumer adoption intentions in the case of high-complexity products but not for low-complexity products, emphasizing the need to adopt different approaches when developing eco-innovations to ensure favorable consumer reactions (Study 2); and (3) a significant impact of the detachability of eco-innovative attributes on consumers' perceptions of trade-offs between environmental benefits and product functionality and on their intentions to adopt eco-innovations (Study 3). These findings add to existing theoretical knowledge, provide actionable managerial implications, and identify fruitful avenues for future research. Practitioner Points• Increasing innovativeness degrees of new ecofriendly attributes should be a key priority for firms aiming to encourage high eco-innovation adoption rates.

Social Innovation in an Interconnected World: Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Using an experimental approach and focusing on end‐user adoption, Paparoidamis, Tran, Leonidou, and Zeriti (), in their article “Being Innovative, While Being Green,” extend the Bloch’s () model on product design and consumer response and explore how three key eco‐innovative product design attributes (innovativeness, eco‐friendliness, and the detachability of eco‐innovative features) trigger consumers’ psychological and behavioral responses to green products. In the context of eco‐innovative product introductions, their study highlights the importance of novel product designs in a green category.…”

“…How do these market actors balance the cost and benefits of social innovation efforts? While Vassallo et al () evaluate three types of organizations and show that each organizational form achieves greater usage under various conditions in India and Paparoidamis et al () focus on consumer responses to green products, if the cost to providers and users are taken into consideration, would their results be different? ‐Though all articles in this special issue identify the complexities of social innovation and the corresponding high effort that is needed to implement it successfully, the implicit higher costs (in terms of time, human resources, organizing, etc.) are not measured.…”

Smart Products: Conceptual Review, Synthesis, and Research Directions*

“…Second, the prospect of being able to combine longer lasting usage cycles on the material side with shorter innovation cycles on the software side presents a promising research avenue from an ecological perspective. So-called eco-innovative product designs are becoming increasingly relevant as consumers' environmental concerns grow (Paparoidamis, Tran, Leonidou, and Zeriti, 2019). In this regard, it may be worthwhile to examine if not only the software-based components of smart products can be designed and provided in a modular fashion, but also the hardware components (e.g., sensors, actuators, connectors, etc.).…”

Shaping a Circular Economy in the Digital TV Industry: Focusing on Ecopreneurship through the Lens of Dynamic Capability

“…The electronics sector has many chances to contribute to a CE; for example, by recovering valuable materials from electronic waste (resource efficiency) and reducing energy consumption (energy efficiency) [33]. Particularly, the digital TV industry has a tendency for rapid technological changes and subsequent shorter product life cycles; therefore, manufacturers in this industry are scrambling to introduce eco-innovative products to the market [25,26]. EU countries are recognized as pioneers in environmental regulations; for this reason, the EU's environmental regulations have received attention from researchers in connection with the CE [5,15].…”

“…Using the case study, we examined the ecopreneurship of the digital TV industry based on following research questions: This study contributes to the existing research in the CE field and fills a research gap by providing a theoretical framework regarding how the industry's participation in and movement toward a CE is shaped based on dynamic capabilities and ecopreneurship. Particularly, understanding ecopreneurship is important to the electronics industry, because increasing issues related to the environmental impact of electronic products are inevitable [24][25][26]. For this reason, examining the ecopreneurship of established companies in the digital TV industry can provide insights on how companies can contribute to a CE while benefitting from pursuing ecopreneurship, such as sustaining a competitive position in the market.…”