When is Sustainability a Liability, and When Is It an Asset? Quality Inferences for Core and Peripheral Attributes

Sustainable products offered in today’s marketplace are labelled with product-related green attributes (i.e. green core attributes) or non-product-related green attributes (i.e. green peripheral attributes). The current research investigates consumers’ inferences about a product’s functional quality...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Journal of business ethics 2021-09, Vol.173 (1), p.109-132
Main Authors:	Skard, Siv, Jørgensen, Sveinung, Pedersen, Lars Jacob Tynes
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	Assets Attributes Business and Management Business Ethics Consumers Education Ethics Inference Liability Management Original Paper Packaging Philosophy Quality Quality of Life Research Sustainability Systematic review
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Sustainable products offered in today’s marketplace are labelled with product-related green attributes (i.e. green core attributes) or non-product-related green attributes (i.e. green peripheral attributes). The current research investigates consumers’ inferences about a product’s functional quality when its core attributes are green (e.g. the ingredients) and when its peripheral attributes are green (e.g. the product packaging). Four experimental studies and an internal meta-analysis show that there is a sustainability liability effect in strength-dependent categories (for both core and peripheral attributes), and a sustainability asset effect in gentleness-dependent categories (for core attributes only). Our research contributes to the current understanding of how consumers make inferences about product quality when contemplating different types of green attributes. The findings have implications for how strength-dependent and gentleness-dependent products should be labelled as green.
ISSN:	0167-4544 1573-0697