Does eco-friendliness come at the expense of quality? : an experimental study on how green product attributes affect quality and preference for eco-friendly products

2018

There is unrealized potential for businesses in the market of green products as more consumers

are moving in the direction of conscious consumption. In order to understand how to best

exploit this potential, there has been an increased amount of research about the drivers and

barriers that lay behind the adoption of green products. We explore how perceived quality can

act as one of these barriers. We aim to find out how changing the centrality of a green attribute

changes the perceived greenness and perceived quality across two different product categories,

respectively the gentle and strong product categories. Further, we explore how perceived

greenness and perceived quality affect preference for green products. In addition, we try to

uncover a perceived trade-off between eco-friendliness and quality, and how this varies

between the two product categories. This research lays the foundation for further research on

strategies to reduce this trade-off.

Conducting an IAT, an online experiment and a field experiment, we find that communicating

eco-friendliness is an asset in the gentle product category if the green attribute is productrelated.

A green non-product-related attribute might have a negative effect on quality, and thus

preference. Although, we find that a green non-product-related attribute can sometimes have

a positive effect on preference as well. For the strong product category, we find that there is a

perceived trade-off between quality and eco-friendliness, making it less beneficial to

communicate the eco-friendliness of strong products. However, we do find that if the

perceived quality is at a certain level, eco-friendliness can increase preference even though the

product might be perceived as having lower quality. We also find that the effect of a green

attribute on product preference is mediated by perceived quality.

Keywords: Green Products, Barriers to Adoption, Environmentally Friendliness, Quality,

Preference, Trade-off, Implicit Associations, Product Attributes, Centrality