Does advertising the green benefits of products contribute to sustainable development goals? A quasi-experimental test of the dilution effect

Gilles Grolleau (), Naoufel Mzoughi and Angela Sutan

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Using two studies, we examine the dilution effect for green products, by testing whether advertising green benefits decreases their perceived instrumentality and thus harms sustainable development. We use a between‐subject design and ask participants to evaluate the efficacy of a pen (Study 1) and a dish detergent (Study 2) with and without environmental attributes. Our results are inconsistent with the predictions of the dilution model because the perceived instrumentality of both products does not decrease when environmental benefits are added. Our findings are relevant for eco‐labeling given anecdotal evidence suggesting that adding green information can harm the perceived quality of products.

Keywords: green products; quality; behavioral economics; dilution model; eco-label; environmental information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-02074770v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Published in Business Strategy and the Environment, 2019, 28 (5), pp.786-793. ⟨10.1002/bse.2280⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-02074770v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Does advertising the green benefits of products contribute to sustainable development goals? A quasi‐experimental test of the dilution effect (2019)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02074770

DOI: 10.1002/bse.2280

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().