Anomalies in the Values for Consumer Goods With Environmental Attributes

Abstract

Many consumer products today present information regarding an environmental attribute (e.g., recycled content). This information can be expected to augment the other attributes, resulting in an overall increased interest in the product. However, previous research on preferences for environmental policies (e.g., an increase in air quality) suggests that environmental values are prone to anomalies. For example, respondents may refuse to provide a value or they may exhibit embedding effects, which means they may value two or more environmental goods less highly together than separately. Anomalies such as embedding violate commonsense assumptions regarding an attribute's contribution to the overall attractiveness of a product. These studies examined whether such anomalies obtain in the valuation of consumer goods with environmental attributes in different elicitation conditions. Study 1 established this anomaly for environmental attributes, in which the values were measured using pricing responses (i.e., “how much would you be willing to pay?”) for trades among consumer goods. Study 2 provided a controlled measurement (via a conjoint method) of the trade‐offs between the environmental and nonenvironmental attributes and established the effect under this elicitation method. Study 3 extended the findings to conjoint tasks with pricing responses and explored the psychological mediators of embedding, including the role of moral involvement. Study 4 concentrated on possible inferential underpinnings of the effect and further established that the emotional and moral content of environmental attributes contributes to their susceptibility to anomalous valuation.

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