Male–Male Status Signaling through Favoring Organic Foods: Is the Signaler Perceived and Treated as a Friend or a Foe?

Abstract

Even though consumers’ status signaling is a heavily researched topic, empirical contributions from two important research areas—the mundane food context and prosocial status signaling between male consumers—to signaling literature are still scarce. Thus, this study empirically investigates how a male signaling about his status through favoring organic foods is perceived and treated by other males in two different sociocultural settings (urban vs. rural). In an urban area—but not in a rural—the pro‐organic signaler was perceived as more respected, altruistic, and affluent than a male who did not signal about this (he also received statistically more money in a charity donation task). This may indicate that signaling about this tendency—because it can be viewed as use of one's own resources for the benefit of others—is not only a way to attain status, but can also make others behave more positively toward the signaler.

Signaling can increase consumers' willingness to pay for green products. Theoretical model and experimental evidence

“…With organic edibles, which are used in Study 1, the correlation between an individual's WTP for a green product and their prosociality should be weaker than for nonedibles. Therefore, edibles either give no signal or only a weak signal (but see Puska et al, ).H3 The correlation between WTP for green products and prosocial traits is stronger for green nonedible products than for green edible products.…”

“…Social subgroups, however, differ with regard to social norms and values, and thus with regard to the question of which products are acceptable as status signals (Bourdieu, ; Brick, Sherman, & Kim, ; Sexton & Sexton, ). For example, among members of the rather liberal staff at a university humanities department, one may be less likely to gain sympathy by driving a Porsche Cayenne but perhaps more so by driving a Tesla (Congleton, ; Dastrup, Zivin, Costa, & Kahn, ; Johnson, Bowker, & Cordell, ; Puska, Kurki, Lähdesmäki, Siltaoja, & Luomala, ). Values do not only vary across social groups but they also change with progressing economic development, from materialist to postmaterialist; therefore, norms against displaying luxury might spread (Glazer & Konrad, ; Koller, Floh, & Zauner, ).…”

Pro-environmental behavior as a signal of cooperativeness: Evidence from a social dilemma experiment (post-print)

“…There is now a small but growing literature addressing the complex question of how environmentalists are perceived. What previous research shows is that pro-environmental behaviors and attitudes may be able to convey information about a person's social status (Brooks & Wilson, 2015;Puska, Kurki, Lähdesmäki, Siltaoja, & Luomala, 2016;Sadalla & Krull, 1995;Skippon, Kinnear, Lloyd, & Stannard, 2016; but see Berger, 2017;Welte & Anastasio, 2010), trustworthiness (Fehrler & Kosfeld, 2013; but see Berger, 2017;Puska et al, 2016), and certain personality traits like conscientiousness, agreeableness, and altruism (Puska et al, 2016;Skippon & Garwood, 2011;Skippon et al, 2016). While existing research shows much promise, it has at least two limitations the present work attempts to address.…”

A Comparison of Motivational Patterns in Sustainable Food Consumption between Pakistan and Finland: Duties or Self-Reliance?

“…However, it is not claimed that the samples secured from a limited number of locations represent the Finnish and Pakistani populations generally. Regional differences may exist in how organic foods are perceived in these countries (Al-Swidi, Huque, Hafeez, & Shariff, 2014;Puska, Kurki, L€ ahdesm€ aki, Siltaoja, & Luomala, 2016). Nevertheless, forming samples for the study in real commercial surroundings should facilitate the mundane realism aspect of the representativeness of the results because the research setting and operations resemble the participants' everyday life events (Jaeger & Porcherot, 2017).…”

“…Therefore, more observations should be obtained from a broader range of cultures, including actual measurements of their VC, HC, HI, and VI orientations in order to cross-check the validity of the results of this research. Finland is believed to be a culturally homogeneous country (Puska et al, 2016). However, Pakistan consists of large provinces such as Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Punjab, and Sindh that can entail within-country cultural diversity.…”