Framing the Message
While research has attempted to ‘define’ the green consumer by variables such as demographics (i.e, age, gender, income level, education), the influence of demographics on environmentally-friendly consumption has not been consistent. Instead, research demonstrates that the use of different advertising appeals can significantly influence attitudes and behaviours towards using environmentally-friendly products and services (e.g., Obermiller 1995; White, MacDonnell, and Dahl 2011).
Message Framing
How environmental issues are framed is key to the impact they will have on the audience, especially if the intent is to promote behaviour change. Merely presenting information is unlikely to be effective. To change people’s behaviours, information must be presented in a way that addresses their needs to accept the message. This can be achieved through message framing; the act of presenting information in a way that elicits the specific desired response from an individual. Message framing can also help organizations or companies choose which aspects of a message to emphasize in order to highlight a particular problem or promote an idea, simply through repetition, placement or using cultural familiarity within a text.Research on environmental communications has explored how framing is used to impact the effectiveness of messages related to environmental practices such as recycling and water conservation. One example of framing is choosing whether to focus on the losses or gains associated with environmentally-friendly consumer behaviour. Previous research has found that in some cases, focusing on negative outcomes of actions can actually lead to a boomerang effect – that is, the consumer chooses to use, for example, even more water in response to the conservation message (Obermiller, 1995).
Focusing on the Benefits
Instead of focusing on the negative impacts of our actions, organizations can choose to either focus on how environmentally -friendly behaviour provides a benefit to the consumers themselves (i.e., saving money on gas by driving a hybrid) or provides a benefit to society as a whole (i.e., less dangerous emissions and a lower carbon footprint by driving a hybrid). Much of the research so far is divided as to the best approach.Some recent work by Green and Peloza (2014) found that consumers do not like to be seen as going green to save money, but rather, they want to present themselves as being ‘green’ for the betterment of society. This type of result indicates that messages highlighting the benefits to society may be more effective. On the other hand, the same study also found that when consumers are alone, they only focus on how going ‘green’ helps them save money.
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