Skepticism about environmental claims presents a ‘significant challenge’ to promoting sustainable consumption, reducing consumers’ intentions to purchase sustainable products, a new study by researchers at Hiroshima University has found.
The study, How Green Skepticism Undermines Green Purchase Intention: The Roles of Information Seeking and Anticipated Guilt, which was published in the Sustainability journal, noted that rather than encouraging more careful decision-making, skepticism, increasingly driven by awareness of greenwashing, reduces peoples’ willingness to buy certain products.
‘While prior research typically assumes a direct negative effect of skepticism on green purchase intention, our results show that green skepticism does not exert a significant direct effect,’ the researchers state. ‘Instead, green skepticism indirectly undermines green purchase intention by reducing consumers’ motivation to seek green product information and weakening anticipated guilt.’
Cognitive and emotional factors
The researchers used a framework incorporating cognitive and emotional factors to assess how skepticism influences consumer behaviour. Following a survey of more than 500 consumers, they determined that skeptical consumers are less likely to investigate whether products are genuinely environmentally friendly.
In addition, this cohort are also likely to feel less moral pressure about choosing less sustainable options – a combination of ‘information avoidance and moral disengagement rather than deeper cognitive and moral engagement’, according to the researchers.
As a result, the study notes that traditional efforts to promote sustainable consumption – which rely on persuasive messaging or appeals to environmental responsibility – may be ineffective in such low-trust environments. Instead, businesses may need to utilise transparent and verifiable information, as well as independent certification, to bolster sustainability perceptions.
Consumption drivers
“The most important message is that green skepticism does not simply make consumers reject green products directly,” commented Eunji Seo, co-author of the study. “Instead, it works more subtly by weakening two important drivers of green consumption: people’s willingness to look for trustworthy environmental information and their anticipated guilt about making less sustainable choices. In other words, skepticism can shut down engagement rather than encourage careful verification. This challenges the common assumption that skeptical consumers will just investigate more before deciding.
“Our findings suggest that, in low-trust environments, skepticism may lead not to deeper scrutiny, but to withdrawal from both cognitive and moral engagement.” Read more here and here.
