Prevent or Promote? Exploiting Loss Biasness to Nudge Norwegian Consumers towards Eco-Friendly Packaged Wine

Abstract

Players in the wine industry across the world, including the Norwegian monopoly player Vinmonopolet, are increasing their efforts to reduce their environmental footprint and achieve sustainable production and operation. A considerable challenge for Vinmonopolet to succeed with this transition is to nudge consumers, often subject to an intention-behaviour gap and potential liability effect, into purchasing eco-friendly lightweight plastic (PET) bottles. This study explores the effectiveness of framing combined with colour priming through eco-labels. In an online scenario-based experiment, respondents from a sample of 500 individuals across Norway were randomly allocated into two experimental groups: loss and gain framing. Glass bottles were labelled with “Not eco-friendly packaging, glass” in the former group, whereas PET bottles were labelled with “Eco-friendly packaging, plastic” in the latter group. From a selection of 12 white wines, respondents were requested to purchase wine to serve ten friends at a dinner party. Among several other concepts, quality perception and emotions experienced during the decision-making process were measured and compared. The findings suggest that loss framing is slightly more effective than gain framing in nudging consumers towards purchasing eco-friendly wine bottles. The effect is contingent on respondents noticing the label. Framing did not trigger emotions as postulated, which may indicate that the framed communication was not persuasive enough. Further, framing did not have different impacts on quality perception. Moreover, the results show that the framing effect is more prominent for individuals for whom environmental considerations are not inherent than for individuals with high environmental concerns. Another finding is that level of neuroticism can partly explain the greater effect of loss framing than gain framing. Despite the failure to demonstrate a clear effect difference between loss and gain framing, the results indicate that loss framing is a slightly more effective method. This both in regard to consumers noticing the label and choosing eco-friendly bottles. Altering the loss-framed communication in favour of a more compelling statement is suggested for further academic research and to be tested in a field study at Vinmonopolet’s stores.