It is easy to do the right thing: Avoiding the backfiring effects of advertisements that blame consumers for waste

Mia M. Birau and Corinne Faure

Journal of Business Research, 2018, vol. 87, issue C, 102-117

Abstract: This paper investigates the backfiring effects of waste-prevention advertising that blames consumers for waste. Five experimental studies provide evidence that message focus (on close versus distant social actors) has an impact on message perception—and, further, on waste intentions and behaviors. Providing information on transgressions incurred by close social actors makes consumers hold less negative attitudes toward waste and feel less able to implement tasks that help reduce waste; this may explain higher transgression rates. Furthermore, simple manipulations of perceived task difficulty through advertising are shown to help mitigate these negative effects and increase the effectiveness of anti-waste campaigns.

Keywords: Waste; Advertising; Social marketing; Descriptive norms; Perceived difficulty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296318301012
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
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:eee:jbrese:v:87:y:2018:i:c:p:102-117

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.02.026

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().