Abstract
How to motivate consumers to maintain environmentally responsible consumption choice rather than occasional green consumption is an important component of sustainability within modern society. Yet, past literature provides two contradictory routes for sequential pro-environmental decisions: consistency effect and licensing effect. The consistency effect builds on follows the logics of self-perception theory and implies that consumers tend to repeat their prior environmentally responsible and irresponsible decisions; the licensing effect follows a goal-based logic to highlight that past pro-environmental behaviour produces a “license” to engage in less pro-environmental behaviour. To reconcile these contradictory predictions, this study extends the existing literature by following a consistent, goal-based logic in theory and exploring self-construal as a moderator that switches from one mode of sequential pro-environmental decisions to the other. Three experimental studies affirm that self-consistency effect occurs for consumers with an accessible interdependent self-construal, but licensing effect is more pronounced for consumers with an accessible independent self-construal. In addition, the interdependent- consistency effect will be stronger and the independent-licensing effect will be weaker if consumers are reminded of high tendency of others’ pro-environmental behaviour in the first decision. Together, these results shed light on the downstream consequences for consumers of pro-environmental choice, with implications for the marketing and regulation of such products.
Highlights
Environmental problems such as contaminated ecosystems and climate change are posing an increasing threat to our social sustainability (Wheeler & Von Braun, 2013)
We predict in the context of sequential pro-environmental consumption behavior, moral licensing effect will be more likely to emerge among individuals with independent self, while moral consistency will more likely to emerge among individuals with interdependent self
Moral licensing effect will be more likely to emerge among individuals with independent self, while moral consistency will more likely to emerge among individuals with interdependent self
Summary
Environmental problems such as contaminated ecosystems and climate change are posing an increasing threat to our social sustainability (Wheeler & Von Braun, 2013). One stream of literature demonstrates that people who have previously purchased a green product show increased inclination to make green consumption choices in future compared to control groups (van der Werff et al, 2014), which is termed the green highlighting effect. Some recent literature has made some strides in understanding conditions of the green licensing effect by identifying some factors, such as consumers’ prior environmental attitude (Gholamzadehmir et al, 2019), environmental consciousness (Garvey & Bolton, 2017), regulatory focus (Schwabe et al, 2018), and signaling strength of past pro-environmental actions in influencing environmental self-identity (van der Werff et al, 2014)
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