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

Abstract

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