Green Consumerism and Ecolabelling: A Strategic Behavioural Model

Abstract

The ethos of “green” marketing is to affect tastes and perceptions so that those individuals for whom the attribute of environmental‐friendliness is significant can signal this preference by choosing the “green” alternative. This paper presents a strategic behavioural model of interactions between two agents, a firm and consumer, under conditions of incomplete information. The outcome of the model is that, unless some restrictive and (arguably) unrealistic conditions apply, some proportion of “green” marketing campaigns will be misleading; “green” marketing is not restricted to “green” products, and “green” consumers only adapt their purchasing habits some of the time. Ecolabelling schemes can be used as a means of ameliorating this inefficiency in information‐transfer. Whether state intervention to make ecolabelling mandatory for “green” products is welfare‐improving depends on the balance between the deadweight losses from the process and the gains in terms of facilitating the expression of “green” preferences.

Buying Green Without Being Seen

“…Hussain, 2000). The lack of consistency between on the one hand positive attitude or stated importance and on the other hand actual behavior is often explained in terms of a social dilemma (Cornelissen, Dewitte, Warlop, & Yzerbyt, 2007;Gupta & Ogden, 2009).…”

Sustainable consumption and marketing

“…fair trade), or organic certification. Certified ethical labelling may prevent misleading marketing claims and facilitate sustainable consumer behaviour by increasing the efficiency of information transfer (Hussain, 2000), though the effectiveness of certified ethical labelling is still a subject of dispute (Ben Youssef & Abderrazak, 2009;Bougherara & Piguet, 2009;Buckley, 2013;Costa, Ibanez, Loureiro, & Marette, 2009;Daugbjerg, Smed, Andersen, & Schvartzman, 2014;Mason, 2009;Testa, Iraldo, Vaccari, & Ferrari, 2013).…”

“…Hussain, 2000). Apparently, which attributes most consumers say to be important to them is not always a good predictor of which attributes really determine their food choice (Mueller, Lockshin, & Louviere, 2010).…”

“…Hussain, 2000). The lack of consistency between on the one hand positive attitude or stated importance and on the other hand actual behaviour is often explained in terms of a social dilemma (Cornelissen, Dewitte, Warlop, & Yzerbyt, 2007;Gupta & Ogden, 2009).…”

“…Hussain, 2000). The contribution of a product to sustainable development can often not be determined from intrinsic product cues.…”