Ambivalence Attitudes Toward Green Products and the Moderating Role of Green Advertisement: An Extended Abstract

Abstract

Concerns related to the environment have become more central in our societies; however, environmental concerns and awareness may not necessarily lead positive changes in consumer buying behaviors toward green products (Hanas 2007). Most of the consumers often endorse environmental protection, but only a few of them put it into practice. Interestingly, very often, consumers’ attitudes toward green products and services are mixed with both positive and negative reactions. Thus, a significant level of ambivalence arises as consumers make their green choices. The main antecedents of ambivalence attitude are intrapersonal and interpersonal discrepancy vis-a-vis the object (Priester and Petty 2001). Moreover, ambivalent attitudes lead to less predictable consumer judgments and behaviors than non-ambivalent attitudes (Conner et al. 2002). Therefore, understanding the formation of ambivalent attitudes toward green products is a significant research issue. Because ambivalent attitudes are formed by conflicting positive and negative evaluations about the green products, their structure is inherently inconsistent (Sengupta and Johar 2002) and thus more susceptible to persuasion attempts. Despite recent progress made in this line of inquiry, more work is needed to understand how communication messages are associated with ambivalence attitudes. The objective of this research, therefore, is to (1) investigate the key factors influencing consumers’ ambivalence toward green products, (2) examine the effect of consumer’s ambivalence attitudes toward green products on consumers’ behavioral intentions, and (3) explore the role of consumer’s ambivalence attitudes on green advertisement effectiveness. The results of this study would make significant contributions for the ambivalence literature and would also generate substantial managerial implications as well.