what do carbon labels attempt to tell consumers
Thought in Brief
The Challenge
Most consumers report positive attitudes toward eco-friendly products and services, but they often seem unwilling to pay for them. Insights from behavioral science can help shut this gap.
The Solution
Consider five approaches: apply social influence, shape expert habits, leverage the domino effect, decide whether to talk to the heart or the brain, and favor experiences over ownership.
The Outcome
People's desire to conform to the beliefs of others—and the habits they develop over fourth dimension—influence the likelihood that they will consume sustainable offerings. The good news is that sustainable choices often lead to further positive behavior.
On the surface, at that place has seemingly never been a better time to launch a sustainable offering. Consumers—especially Millennials—increasingly say they want brands that embrace purpose and sustainability. Indeed, one recent report revealed that certain categories of products with sustainability claims showed twice the growth of their traditional counterparts. Nevertheless a frustrating paradox remains at the heart of light-green business organization: Few consumers who report positive attitudes toward eco-friendly products and services follow through with their wallets. In one recent survey 65% said they want to buy purpose-driven brands that advocate sustainability, yet merely near 26% really do and then.
People are influenced to install solar panels past near neighbors who have done so.
Narrowing this "intention-action gap" is important non simply for meeting corporate sustainability goals but also for the planet. Unilever estimates that almost lxx% of its greenhouse gas footprint depends on which products customers cull and whether they use and dispose of them in a sustainable manner—for example, by conserving water and energy while doing the laundry or recycling containers properly after use.
We take been studying how to encourage sustainable consumption for several years, performing our ain experiments and reviewing research in marketing, economic science, and psychology. The good news is that academics have learned a lot about how to align consumers' behaviors with their stated preferences. Much of the research has focused on public interventions by policy makers—but the findings can exist harnessed past whatever organization that wishes to nudge consumers toward sustainable purchasing and beliefs. Synthesizing these insights, we take identified five actions for companies to consider: apply social influence, shape skillful habits, leverage the domino issue, decide whether to talk to the eye or the brain, and favor experiences over ownership.
Use Social Influence
In 2010 the city of Calgary, Alberta, had a problem. It had recently rolled out a program called grasscycling, which involves residents' leaving grass clippings to naturally decompose on a lawn later on mowing, rather than bagging them to exist taken to a landfill. The city had created an informational entrada well-nigh the program that highlighted its benefits: Grasscycling would return valuable nutrients to the soil, protect the lawn, and help the soil retain moisture. What's more, this sustainable behavior really required less work from the individual. Just initial adoption rates were lower than the metropolis had expected.
Lloyd Miller
One of the states (White) advised Calgary to try to alter residents' behavior using "social norms"—informal understandings inside a social grouping about what constitutes adequate behavior. Scores of studies have shown that humans accept a strong desire to fit in and volition suit to the behavior of those around them. To leverage this motivation, White and her colleague Bonnie Simpson worked with the city on a large-scale field study in which messages were left on residents' doors: "Your neighbors are grasscycling. Yous can as well" and "Nigh people are finding ways to reduce the materials that are going to the landfill—you tin contribute by grasscycling." Within two weeks this simple intervention resulted in almost twice as much residential grasscycling as did the command status.
Harnessing the power of social influence is one of the most constructive ways to elicit pro-environmental behaviors in consumption as well. Telling online shoppers that other people were ownership eco-friendly products led to a 65% increase in making at to the lowest degree 1 sustainable buy. Telling buffet diners that the norm was to not take as well much at once (and that information technology was OK to return for seconds) decreased food waste matter by xx.five%. A major predictor of whether people will install solar panels is whether their shut-by neighbors have done and then. And, in peradventure the most dramatic finding, telling academy students that other commuters were ditching their cars in favor of more-sustainable modes of transportation (such equally cycling) led them to employ sustainable send five times every bit frequently as did those who were simply given data nearly alternatives.
Sometimes social motivators tin backlash, however. If merely a few people are engaging in a sustainable behavior, it may appear to exist not socially approved of, thus discouraging adoption. In such instances companies tin enlist advocates to promote the positive elements of the production or action. Advocates are about compelling when they themselves have undertaken the behavior. Ane study found that when an abet related why he or she had installed residential solar panels, 63% more than people followed accommodate than when the advocate had not actually installed panels.
Social norms may also turn off certain consumer segments. For example, some men associate sustainability with femininity, leading them to avoid sustainable options. Merely if a brand is already strongly associated with masculinity, this effect can exist mitigated. Jack Daniel's, for example, embeds sustainability in many aspects of its concern. Taglines such as "With all due respect to progress, the globe could use a lilliputian less plastic" (accompanied by a row of wooden barrels) and "Even Jack Daniel'south waste is too good to waste matter" link sustainability to quality and great gustation. Considering the company sells waste products and unused resources to other industries, it sends zero waste to landfills. And whiskey fans can buy used charcoal from the mellowing vats in the form of charcoal-broil briquettes for grilling at home, reaffirming traditional masculine values. All this highlights the company's support for the work ethic, the land and the air, and the community in which Jack Daniel'southward operates. To avert losing its standing as a rugged, masculine brand, it has expertly integrated sustainability into its existing branding.
In another example, people who lean right on the political spectrum are sometimes less open up to engaging in eco-friendly behaviors because they associate them with a liberal political ideology. In the United States, for example, Republicans were less likely to buy a compact fluorescent low-cal bulb that they knew was more energy-efficient than an incandescent bulb when information technology was labeled "Protect the Environment" than when that label was missing.
A solution is to make communications resonate with Republicans' political identity—for case, past referencing duty, authority, and consistency with in-group norms. In ane field study Republican residents recycled more after being told, "You can join the fight by recycling with those like you in your community. Your actions help usa to do our civic duty because recycling is the responsible thing to do in our guild. Because of people like you lot, nosotros tin can follow the communication of important leaders by recycling. You Tin can bring together the fight!" That appeal didn't resonate in the aforementioned manner with Democrats, who were more likely to respond to messaging around social welfare. Some other solution is to focus on values that everyone shares, such as family, customs, prosperity, and security.
Consumers frequently have negative associations with sustainable product options, viewing them as existence of lower quality, less aesthetically pleasing, and more expensive. In one example, when people valued strength in a product—a car cleaner, say—they were less probable to choose sustainable options. I mode to offset such negative associations is to highlight the product's positively viewed attributes—such as innovativeness, novelty, and safety. For example, Tesla focuses on the innovative blueprint and functional performance of its cars more than than on their green credentials—a message that resonates with its target market place. This also helps overcome the concern of some men that green products are feminine.
Social influence tin be turbocharged in three ways. The showtime is by simply making sustainable behaviors more evident to others. In some of Katherine White'south research, people were asked to choose between an eco-friendly granola bar (which had the tagline "Good for y'all and the surroundings") and a traditional granola bar ("A healthy, tasty snack"). The sustainable selection was twice as probable to exist chosen when others were present than when the choice was made in private. Other researchers have establish similar effects with products ranging from eco-friendly hand sanitizers to loftier-efficiency automobiles. The city of Halifax, Nova Scotia, constitute that when residents were required to put their household waste in clear bags, thus making the contents of their trash (which often included items that should have been recycled or composted) visible to the neighbors, the amount of garbage that went to the landfill decreased by 31%.
A 2d way to increase the touch on of social influence is to make people's commitments to eco-friendly behavior public. For example, asking hotel guests to betoken that they agree to reuse towels by hanging a carte du jour on their room door increased towel reuse past xx% In a like study, request hotel guests to vesture a pin symbolizing their commitment to participating in an energy-conservation program increased towel reuse by 40%. And a study aimed at reducing vehicle idle time when children were being picked up at schoolhouse asked some parents to display a window sticker reading "For Our Air: I Turn My Engine Off When Parked." The intervention resulted in a 73% subtract in idling fourth dimension.
A tertiary approach is to use healthy competition betwixt social groups. In one example, communicating that another group of students was behaving in a positively viewed way ("We are trying to encourage students to compost…. Recently, a survey…found that Calculating Science students are the nigh effective in composting efforts when compared across the student groups") fabricated business students more than twice as probable to compost their biodegradable coffee cups. When the Earth Wildlife Fund and its partner volunteer organizations wanted to enhance awareness virtually sustainable deportment for Earth Hour, a global lights-off event, they spearheaded friendly energy-saving competitions between cities. The program has spread through social diffusion: Information technology began in Sydney, Commonwealth of australia, in 2007 and now reaches 188 countries, with 3.5 billion social media mentions from Jan to March of 2018 and lights switched off at almost 18,000 landmarks during Earth Hour 2018.
Shape Good Habits
Humans are creatures of habit. Many behaviors, such every bit how nosotros commute to work, what we purchase, what we eat, and how we dispose of products and packaging, are part of our regular routines. Oft the key to spreading sustainable consumer behaviors is to offset break bad habits and so encourage good ones.
Habits are triggered by cues found in familiar contexts. For example, using dispensable coffee cups (a habit repeated a staggering 500 billion times a yr across the globe) may exist a response to cues, such as the default cup provided past the barista and a trash bin illustrated with a picture of a cup, both common in coffee shops.
Companies can utilise design features to eliminate negative habits and substitute positive ones. The simplest and probably almost effective approach is to make sustainable behavior the default choice. For instance, researchers in Frg discovered that when greenish electricity was set as the default selection in residential buildings, 94% of individuals stuck with information technology. In other cases, making green options—such as reusing towels or receiving electronic rather than paper bank statements—the default increased uptake of the more than sustainable option. In total-service restaurants in California, drinks no longer come with plastic straws; customers must explicitly request one. Some other strategy is to make the desired action easier—by, for example, placing recycling bins nearby, requiring less complex sorting of recyclables, or providing free travel cards for public transport.
3 subtle techniques can help shape positive habits: using prompts, providing feedback, and offering incentives.
Prompts might be text letters reminding people to engage in desired behaviors, such every bit cycling, jogging, or commuting in some other eco-friendly way to work. Prompts work all-time when they are piece of cake to understand and received where the behavior volition have place, and when people are motivated to engage in the behavior. In 1 study just placing prompts near recycling bins increased recycling past 54%.
Feedback sometimes tells people how they performed lonely and sometimes compares their performance to that of others. Household energy bills that show how consumers' usage compares with that of neighbors tin can encourage free energy saving. If the behavior is repeatedly performed—driving a auto in varying traffic conditions, for example—real-fourth dimension feedback like what the Toyota Prius offers drivers nearly their gas mileage can exist effective.
Adopting a sustainable behavior makes people apt to brand other positive changes.
Incentives tin accept whatsoever number of forms. In the United kingdom of great britain and northern ireland, Coca-Cola has partnered with Merlin Entertainments to offering "reverse vending machines" from which consumers receive half-price entry tickets to theme parks when they recycle their plastic drink bottles. Incentives should be used with intendance, considering if they are removed, the desired behavior may disappear too. Another concern is that they may undermine consumers' intrinsic desire to adopt a behavior. In a study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, "Are Two Reasons Meliorate Than One?," researchers plant that combining external incentives ("Save money!") with intrinsic motives ("Save the environment!") resulted in less preference for a sustainable product than did intrinsic appeals alone. The authors hypothesized that this occurred considering an external motivation can "crowd out" an intrinsic want.
Fifty-fifty using these tactics, information technology is almost e'er difficult to intermission habits. Merely major life changes—such as moving to a new neighborhood, starting a new job, or acquiring a new group of friends—may create an exception, because such changes make people more likely to consciously evaluate and experiment with their routines. One study examined 800 households, one-half of which had recently moved. Half the participants in each group (half the movers and half the nonmovers) were given an intervention consisting of an interview, a selection of eco-friendly items, and information near sustainability. The movers were significantly more likely than the nonmovers to engage in environmentally friendly behaviors after the intervention.
Leverage the Domino Effect
One of the benefits of encouraging consumers to form desirable habits is that it tin can create positive spillover: People like to exist consequent, so if they adopt ane sustainable behavior, they are often apt to make other positive changes in the futurity. Later IKEA launched a sustainability initiative chosen Alive Lagom (lagom means "the right amount" in Swedish), information technology studied the sustainability journey in depth among a core group of its customers. The company found that although people may begin with a unmarried stride—such as reducing household food waste matter—they frequently motion on to act in other domains, such as free energy conservation. IKEA observed a snowball effect as well: People would begin with modest actions and build to more meaningful ones. For case, buying LED light bulbs might lead to wearing warmer vesture and turning downwards the thermostat, irresolute curtains and blinds to decrease estrus loss, insulating doors and windows, buying energy-efficient appliances, installing a programmable thermostat, and then on.
Information technology is important to think that negative spillover can occur too: A sustainable action may pb someone to subsequently conduct less sustainably. Termed licensing by researchers, this occurs when a consumer feels that an initial upstanding activity confers permission to conduct less virtuously in the future. In one instance, researchers found that people who had performed a virtual green shopping task were less likely to acquit prosocially (in a game they were less likely to help others by allocating resources) than those who had performed a virtual conventional shopping chore. In other examples, people use more paper when they can prove that they are recycling and apply more of a product (such every bit mouthwash, glass cleaner, or hand sanitizer) when information technology is a sustainable one. Similarly, machine models with increased fuel efficiency may lead people to bulldoze more miles, and more-efficient home heating and cooling systems may lead them to increase usage.
Hope and pride can be particularly useful in driving sustainable consumption.
Companies can have steps to lessen the risk of negative spillover. They tin can ensure that the first sustainable activeness is peculiarly effortful, which seems to build commitment. When consumers are asked to brand smaller commitments, it is best not to publicize those deportment, because that may pb to something researchers call slacktivism. In one study, participants who had engaged in token support for a cause that demonstrated to others that they were "good people"—such as joining a "public" Facebook group or signing an online petition—were less likely to engage in a private task later, such as volunteering for the cause. However, those who privately joined a Facebook grouping or signed a petition were more likely to see the crusade as reflecting their truthful values and to follow through. Note that this differs from the earlier example of giving pins to hotel guests who choose free energy-efficient options, because in that study wearing a pin was explicitly tied to a commitment to perform a sustainable action. Someone who sees a token initial behavior every bit engagement in a cause ofttimes performs fewer positive actions in the future.
Make up one's mind Whether to Talk to the Eye or the Brain
How companies communicate with consumers has an enormous influence on the adoption of sustainable behaviors. When getting prepare to launch or promote a product or a campaign, marketers frequently have a choice between emotional levers and rational arguments. Either can exist effective—but only if certain conditions are met.
The emotional appeal.
People are more probable to engage in a behavior when they derive positive feelings from doing so. This core precept is often overlooked when information technology comes to sustainability, for which ad campaigns are probable to emphasize disturbing warnings. Research has found that hope and pride are especially useful in driving sustainable consumption. Bacardi and Lonely Whale cultivate promise in their collaboration to eliminate 1 billion single-utilize plastic straws, and they utilise the hashtag #thefuturedoesntsuck to promote events and call for consumer activeness. And when people in one study were publicly praised each week for their energy-efficiency efforts, thus engendering pride, they saved more energy than a group that was given pocket-sized (upwards to €5) weekly financial rewards.
Guilt is a more than complicated emotional tool. Inquiry by White and colleagues suggests that information technology can exist an constructive motivator but should be used carefully. In ane experiment, when accountability was subtly highlighted (participants were asked to brand a product option in a public setting), consumers reported anticipating future guilt if they failed to shop for green products, and 84% chose fair merchandise options. All the same, when an explicit guilt appeal was used ("How can you relish a loving cup of tea knowing that the people who produce it are non being treated fairly?"), they became angry, upset, or irritable, and only 40% chose the fair trade option. Indeed, an affluence of other research confirms that activating moderate amounts of guilt, sadness, or fear, is more constructive than trying to elicit a stiff reaction. This research suggests that clemency or cause appeals that use especially emotive images (such equally explicit images of suffering children) may not be as effective as less heavy-handed ones.
Lloyd Miller
The rational appeal.
In 2010 Unilever launched a campaign to draw attending to the fact that although some palm oil harvesting leads to rain forest destruction, its palm oil is all sustainably farmed. Printed on a photograph of a pelting forest was the tagline "What yous buy at the supermarket tin can modify the world…. Small deportment, big deviation." The company was leveraging decades-onetime research findings that people are unlikely to undertake a behavior unless they have a sense of what researchers call self-efficacy—conviction that their deportment will accept a meaningful impact. Thus one key to marketing a sustainable product is communicating what issue its use will have on the surround.
Although information about sustainable behaviors and their outcomes can exist persuasive, how the information is framed is critical, specially for products with high up-front costs and delayed benefits. Recent research by one of united states of america (Hardisty) found that consumers who are buying appliances or electronics typically don't retrieve about energy efficiency—and fifty-fifty if they do, they don't care equally much almost hereafter energy saving equally virtually the up-forepart price. Withal, in a field study at a chain of drugstores, labeling the "10-yr dollar cost" of energy for each product increased energy-efficient purchases from 12% to 48%. Such labels are constructive for three reasons: They brand the future consequences more salient, they frame the data in dollars (which consumers care about) rather than free energy saving (which they oft don't), and they scale up energy costs tenfold.
Indeed, people's tendency to adopt avoiding losses over making equivalent gains—what psychologists call loss aversion—tin can help marketers frame choices by communicating what's at stake. For instance, photos showing how glaciers have receded can be a powerful means of conveying environmental losses associated with climate change. White and her colleagues Rhiannon MacDonnell and Darren Dahl found that in the context of residential recycling, a loss-framed message ("Recall nearly what will exist lost in our community if we don't continue recycling") works all-time when it'due south combined with specific details near the behavior, such as when to put out the recycling cart, what materials are recyclable, then forth. That's because people in a loss-framed mindset tend to want concrete ways to deal with a problem.
In improver, messages that focus on local impacts and local reference points are peculiarly powerful. That's why New York Urban center'south recent waste-reduction advertizing campaign illustrated that all the garbage thrown out in the city on one 24-hour interval could fill the Empire State Building. Messages that communicate the concrete effects of sustainable consumer beliefs change in other ways tin can also be effective. Tide encourages consumers to take the #CleanPledge and wash their clothes in common cold water. Not only is this a consumer commitment, but the entrada communicates clear consequences, such as "Switching to cold water for i yr tin can save enough energy to charge your telephone for a lifetime." Some other tactic is giving consumers something tangible to display their support of a brand or a cause and reporting articulate outcomes. For case, 4ocean lets consumers know that for every upcycled bracelet they buy from the company, one pound of trash volition be removed from the body of water.
Favor Experiences Over Buying
Along with working to change consumer behavior, some companies have found success with business models that seemingly brand consumers more open to dark-green alternatives. In the "experience economy," companies offer experiential options as an alternative to material goods. For example, Honeyfund allows wedding souvenir givers to bypass cookie-cutter registries filled with typical household goods and instead contribute to destination honeymoons, gourmet dinners, and other adventures for the bride and groom. Tinggly, whose tagline is "Give stories, not stuff," likewise lets consumers purchase adventures rather than tangible products as gifts. In addition to the potential sustainability benefit, research shows, giving an experience makes both giver and receiver happier, leads to stronger personal connections, and cultivates more than-positive memories.
The sharing economy is enjoying similar success. Indeed, some of the leading growth models in recent years have involved businesses that neither develop nor sell new products or services but instead facilitate access to existing ones—which ofttimes means a much smaller environmental footprint. Businesses have sprung up to offering sharing and borrowing for everything from clothing and accessories (Rent the Runway and Purse Borrow or Steal) to vehicles (Zipcar and car2go), vacation rentals (Airbnb), and even on-demand tractors in Africa (Hello Tractor). Withal, sharing services can lead consumers to choose the piece of cake-to-access option (such as an Uber or Lyft ride) rather than a more than sustainable one, such every bit walking, biking, or taking public ship. Thus it's worth carefully considering what touch the service a company offers volition have on consumers' ultimate beliefs. Lyft has responded to this business past committing to first its operations globally, "through the direct funding of emission mitigation efforts, including the reduction of emissions in the automotive manufacturing process, renewable energy programs, forestry projects, and the capture of emissions from landfills," resulting in carbon-neutral rides for all.
Elements of sustainability can be built into the use and disposal of products.
Other companies have won customers over past offering to recycle products after utilise. Both Eileen Fisher and Patagonia encourage customers to buy high-quality pieces of their wearable, vesture them equally long as possible, and then return them to the company to be refurbished and resold. Thus one way to encourage eco-friendly consumer beliefs is to build elements of sustainability into how products are used and ultimately disposed of.
Making Sustainability Resonate
Despite the growing momentum behind sustainable business practices, companies withal strive to communicate their brands' sustainability to consumers in ways that heighten make relevance, increase market share, and fuel a shift toward a culture of sustainable living. We take offered a card of tools—informed by behavioral science—that can help. We recommend that companies work to empathise the wants and needs of their target market place, along with the barriers and benefits to realizing behavioral change, and tailor their strategies appropriately. We likewise recommend pilot A/B testing to make up one's mind which tactics piece of work best.
Using marketing fundamentals to connect consumers with a brand'south purpose, showing benefits over and above conventional options, and making sustainability irresistible are key challenges for businesses in the coming decades. Equally more and more succeed, sustainable concern will become smart business.
A version of this article appeared in the July–Baronial 2019 effect (pp.124–133) of Harvard Business Review.
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Source: https://hbr.org/2019/07/the-elusive-green-consumer
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