Who is attracted to purchase green products through information provision: A nationwide social experiment to promote eco-friendly coffee

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of the provision of information about environmentally friendly coffee on consumers’ actual purchasing behavior, focusing on the association of information provision with consumers’ environmentally conscious and socioeconomic status (education, income, and unemployment). A unique aspect of this study is that we utilized a dataset from a nationwide social experiment in Japan involving more than 10,000 vending machines serving brewed coffee. Although we found that in general, informing consumers about the product’s eco-friendliness stimulated consumers’ purchasing behavior, its significance was diminished after controlling the association between the information provision and consumers’ characteristics. In contrast, the sales of eco-friendly coffee significantly increased only when we provided verbal information to consumers in highly environmentally conscious regions, while there was no significant association with consumers’ socioeconomic status.