Word: griskevicius
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Idealistic environmentalists may not like these findings, but they should pay attention to them. Many hotels appeal to guests to reuse their towels with little cards asking them to help protect the planet. But as evolutionary psychologist Vladas Griskevicius of the University of Minnesota helped show in a 2008 Journal of Consumer Research paper (here's a PDF), hotel patrons are much more likely to reuse towels when informed that a majority of hotel guests do so than when they are merely asked to help save the environment...
...practical conclusions here? If green products are too cheap, they might undermine the buyer's ability to signal her status - a desire built into our evolutionary psychology. Griskevicius and his colleagues recommend that companies find a way to publicize the fact that celebrities buy green products. They might also consider keeping those products at a higher price, since penniless people can't afford to indulge in status-seeking and others will pay a premium for it. We may all be selfish and petty, but there's no reason the planet can't benefit from those shortcomings...
...weeks ago, at the Association for Psychological Science convention in San Francisco, Griskevicius presented new research that furthers the competitive-altruism theory. Traditionally, economists have presumed that if people are seeking status, they will simply buy the most luxurious product they can afford. But Griskevicius and his colleagues - Joshua Taylor of the University of New Mexico and Bram Van den Bergh of the Rotterdam School of Management - theorized that when given an eco-friendly alternative, competitive altruism would compel people to forgo luxury for environmental status. To test the theory, they conducted several experiments...
...Griskevicius and his colleagues conducted a separate study, this one involving 93 students. This time, they presented the volunteers with choices involving different products, including a North Face backpack with water-resistant coating and many storage compartments vs. a simple, eco-friendly North Face backpack with fewer features but which was constructed from organic fibers. This time, the students were asked to imagine they were buying the equally priced products either at a store or online, in private. The results: those imagining themselves buying the backpacks in public were more likely to go for the enviro backpacks, even though they...
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