Inspiring Green Consumer Choices

Leverage Neuroscience to Reshape Marketplace Behavior

Michael E. Smith

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781398601000
• eBook ISBN: 9781398601017
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Consumer Behaviour
• Index: Business

While many consumers profess a desire to help end climate change by engaging in more sustainable behaviors, consumer behavior experts note the "say-do" gap between expressed intention and behavior. How do we explain this? What, if anything, can consumers be encouraged to do to close this gap and purchase sustainable products and services? Inspiring Green Consumer Choices explains the factors that underlie the discrepancy between consumers' expressed preferences and their incongruous behavior in the marketplace. Drawing from advances in neuroscience, behavioral economics and experimental psychology, the author reveals how marketplace behavior is not always rational. Instead it is frequently the product of mental shortcuts, triggered by situational cues and colored by implicit emotional responses. In making purchasing decisions, routine consumer behavior is governed less by intention than by mental habits and unconscious response biases.These tendencies are difficult (but not impossible) to change. Inspiring Green Consumer Choices outlines how techniques such as psychological framing, design of choice architectures and pricing strategy can be used to disrupt habits and promote sustainable behavior. The author also addresses the role that legislative policy and changing social norms can play in accelerating and sustaining behavior change. Illustrated with case studies and filled with best practices, Inspiring Green Consumer Choices helps marketers understand how consumers make purchase decisions in order to shift consumption choices towards a more sustainable future.

Index

NB: page numbers in italic indicate figures or tables.

Aaker, David 39

active memory see working memory

addictions, physical 50, 93

Advertising Research Foundation 53

Airbnb 19

Ajzen, Icek 86, 91, 177

Amazon 19

“Climate Pledge Friendly” program 96, 180

amnesia 69, 71, 74, 75

amygdala 115

and disgust 134

and motivated reasoning 162

anterior cingulate cortex

and cognitive dissonance 157, 158

and effort 34

anterior insula 47, 48–49, 50, 115

and the autonomic nervous system 49, 157

and cognitive dissonance 157, 158

and disgust 134, 135, 141

and effort 34, 51

and inhibitory control 49, 61, 117–18

and loss 61

and motivated reasoning 162

post-choice activity in 158

and social risk assessment 118

Anthropocene era 14, 109, 204–10

approach-avoidance conflicts 49, 50, 51

“approach motivation” 50, 54, 56

Aronson, Elliot and Tavris, Carol 152

associative networks 38–39, 39

and brands 39

autonomic nervous system 49, 157

“availability heuristic”, the 36–38

“bandwagon” effect see norms, social

barriers, to sustainable behaviors 179, 179–83

identifying 179

purchase decisions 94–96, 180

recycling 181–82

transportation 182–83

basal ganglia 47, 70

and procedural learning 75–76

see also nucleus accumbens (NAcc): striatum; substantia nigra (SN)

behavioral contagion see social contagion

behavioral disorders 50

“behavioral immune system” (BIS) 131–46, 203

and advertising effectiveness 146

and the circular economy 139–46, 203

food waste 142–44

technical material stream, the 144–46

water recycling 132, 140–42

disgust 132–36

and brain activity 134–35

core disgust 135

facial expression, characteristic 132, 133

interpersonal disgust 135, 136

moral dis...

Table of contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 01 Growing Cracks in the Consumer Economy
• 02 The Not-So-Conscious Consumer
• 03 Decoding Consumer Wanting and Liking
• 04 The Force of Habit in Consumer Behavior
• 05 Green Intentions Are Not Enough
• 06 Leveraging the Social Imperative
• 07 Evading the Behavioral Immune System
• 08 Confronting the Need for Cognitive Consistency
• 09 Public Policy and Internalizing Externalities
• Conclusion
• Index