Influence of Altruistic Motives on Organic Food Purchase: Theory of Planned Behavior

Marketing campaigns of organic food emphasize utilitarian benefits and psychological benefits as well as consumer culture to enhance environmental sustainability. In order to study the purchase intention of organic food, the authors developed a model using antecedents like warm glow, subjective norm, attitude and perceived behavioral control. This study examines the model for the Indian and the USA samples and thus integrated using three theories: Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), Pro-Social Behavior (PSB) Theory with the interaction of Consumer Culture Theory. The model is estimated using the multi-group Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) technique using R software with samples from India (n = 692) and the USA (n = 640). Results differ for Indian and USA samples. The expectation of the “warm glow” resulted from an environmentally friendly purchase as having a higher influence on Indian samples than that of the USA. Further, the attitude towards organic food purchase intention is stronger for US samples than the Indian, and the group difference is significant, while all the relationships that take warm glow as an antecedent have higher β for Indian samples. Moreover, the study found that attitude towards organic food is a major element for US subsamples, whereas subjective norm plays a major role in Indian samples to adopt organic food. Managerially, the present study suggests that a firm marketing its organic food must concentrate more on “warm glow” for Indian consumers in order to improve their market share.

Impact of the anti-consumption lifestyle on brand attitudes via green advertising: The moderating effect of message types

The purpose of this study is to examine how anti-consumption lifestyles affect the brand attitude through the benefits (utilitarian environmental and warm glow) of green advertising. It has been confirmed that the message types used in the advertising can influence the evaluation of brand attitudes, depending on whether the focus is on promotion or prevention. Respondents were gathered from 265 South Korean consumers. The survey data were regressed and the research hypothesis was verified using the Process Model. As a result, the anti-consumption lifestyle positively affects the brand attitude of green advertising through warm glow (βindirect = .073) and utilitarian environmental benefit (βindirect = .217). These results revealed that the anti-consumption lifestyle can influence brand attitude through warm glow and utilitarian environmental benefit. In particular, when the moderating effect of message types is verified, the warm glow can have a more positive effect on brand attitudes through a promotion-focused message (β = .1559, p = .05), and the utilitarian environmental benefit can have a more positive effect on brand attitudes through a prevention-focused message (β = –.226, p = .024). In conclusion, this study can provide insight into the lifestyle of target customers of eco-friendly advertisements and message types used in advertisements. AcknowledgmentThis work was supported by the Kyonggi University Research Grant 2019.

Do nudges crowd out prosocial behavior?

Both theory on motivational crowding and recent empirical evidence suggest that nudging may sometimes backfire and actually crowd out prosocial behavior, due to decreased intrinsic motivation and warm glow. In this study, we tested this claim by investigating the effects of three types of nudges (default nudge, social norm nudge, and moral nudge) on donations to charity in a preregistered online experiment (N = 1098). Furthermore, we manipulated the transparency of the nudges across conditions by explicitly informing subjects of the nudges that were used. Our results show no indication that nudges crowd out prosocial behavior; instead, all three nudges increased donations. The positive effects of the nudges were driven by the subjects who did not perceive the nudges as attempts to manipulate their behavior, while donations among subjects who felt that the nudges were manipulative remained unaffected. Subjects’ self-reported happiness with their choice also remained unaffected. Thus, we find no indication that nudges crowded out warm glow when acting altruistically. Generally, our results are good news for the proponents of nudges in public policy, since they suggest that concerns about unintended motivational crowding effects on prosocial behavior have been overstated.