El comportamiento del consumidor ante el cambio climáticoel papel de la motivación y la emoción

Résumé

The negative consequences of human behaviour, which contribute to global climate change, have become increasingly important on political, economic and social agendas in recent years (Bush, 2008; Hulme, 2009). As it has been shown that human activities are one of the major causes of climate change, (Oreskes, 2004; Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ¿IPCC-, 2007; Parry et al., 2007; Bi and Parton, 2008) it seems clear that a sustainable future can only be achieved through substantial changes in individuals¿ attitudes and behaviours (Gardner and Stern, 2008; Spence and Pidgeon, 2009). To generate such changes, it is first necessary to understand the factors that influence and determine sustainable behaviour and the characteristics that define a ¿green consumer¿. Then effective advertising campaigns (Petty and Cacioppo, 1986; Viswanath and Emmons, 2006; Montoro et al., 2008) that encourage the implementation of sustainable behaviours which mitigate the effects of climate change can be designed (Pelletier et al., 2011). This paper focuses on achieving both objectives through a variety of techniques which are described in more detail below. Although a substantial body of literature has tried to identify the determinants of consumer environmental behaviour, (Wohlwill, 1970; Kotler, 1972; Ellen, 1994; Minton and Rose, 1997; Strong, 1997; Crane and Desmond, 2002; Shaw and Newholm, 2002; Casimir and Dutilh, 2003; Mostafa, 2007; Pelletier et al., 2011), thus far, there is no integrated model which explains this behaviour (Winter, 2000). Research is being conducted to identify new theories and variables as explanatory factors of ecological consumer behaviour (Boldero, 1995; Kollmuss and Agyeman, 2002; Chen and Chai., 2010). To this end, this paper incorporates the environmental motivation variable as (i) an explanatory pro-environmental attitude variable (Pelletier et al., 1997; Villacorta et al., 2003; Barr, 2007) and (ii) a factor relevant to the design of environmental communications (Vansteenkiste et al., 2004; Vansteenkiste et al. 2006; Pelletier et al., 2011). This paper reviews the use of green advertising campaigns as a means of governmental, institutional and organizational intervention to influence the public¿s environmental behaviour at an individual level (Kaufmann-Hayoz and Gutscher, 2001; Stern, 2011), and researches how such campaigns should be designed and evaluated (Montoro et al., 2006; Latimer et al., 2007; Leonidou et al., 2011). The scientific literature on the main elements that should be considered in the design of such campaigns (Kolandai-Matchett, 2009), was reviewed and experimental tests were conducted using different messages designed with a distinct combination of the two most common elements of the message in the field of green advertising: valence and gain/loss frame (Bolls, et al., 2001; Lai and Kuo, 2007; Spence and Pidgeon, 2010; Van de Velde et al., 2010; Peacock et al., 2011). Previous research about green advertising and climate change has been conducted mainly through the analysis and evaluation of the effectiveness of cognitive persuasion strategies, creating advertisements with a rational, rather than an emotional tone (Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ibañez, 2006; Montoro-Rios et al., 2006), and placing less importance on affective or emotional effectiveness (Fishbein et al., 2002; Dillard and Shen, 2005). Environmental communication strategies implemented to date have relied almost exclusively on providing consumers with information about the negative environmental impact of certain actions, products and services; appealing to environmentally and socially responsible consumers, while simultaneously trying to raise awareness, knowledge and environmental concern to encourage individuals to adapt environmentally sustainable behaviours (Pelletier et al., 2008). Despite this, it has been shown that rational arguments alone do not change consumer behaviour (Mitra et al., 2011). Some studies have concluded that rational messages have less impact than emotional ones (Helmig and Thaler, 2010; Murphy et al., 2010) and ads with emotional content can generate positive effects on attitude and intention toward the objective or behaviour promoted (Zajonc and Hazel, 1982; Wright and Lynch, 1995). Consequently, research on emotional processing stimulated by messages with emotional content in environmental communications, and the exploration of the effectiveness of advertising from an affective dimension is becoming an increasingly relevant task for investigators (McKenzie-Mohr, 2000; Neukom and Ashford, 2003; Kennedy et al., 2009). Therefore, these study addresses both of these issues in an effort to determine how to create effective advertising campaigns to encourage sustainable behaviour. No comprehensive marketing study would be complete without mention of the long tradition of self-report techniques in marketing to assess both cognitive and emotional effectiveness of advertising, in order to identify the overall attitude toward the ad. However, some researchers have been sceptical about using this measure to gauge the emotional reactions of consumers to marketing stimuli (Wiles and Cornwell, 1990; Wang and Minor, 2008) as the exclusive use of self-reports provide only a glimpse of the emotions generated by ads (Lang, 1968) and has many limitations (Ambler et al., 2000; Bolls et al., 2001; Hubert and Kenning, 2008; Micu and Plummer, 2010; Peacock et al., 2011). Specifically, in environmental research, answers obtained through self-report techniques may be influenced by society, religion or culture (Biraumer and Öhman, 1993) and biased by social desirability (Ravaja, 2004; Micu and Plummer, 2010). For these reasons, this paper evaluates ecological advertising using different processes and methodologies than those used in most research to date. The technique used in this research is psycho-physiological (Ravaja, 2004) and it has been chosen to mitigate the limitations of self-report techniques. The scientific literature on different psycho-physiological measures and their interpretations is reviewed below, and these applications in the field of marketing in recent years are discussed. This research paper summarizes all of the issues previously discussed in three different studies. The first study analyzed the role of environmental motivation as a determinant of environmental behaviour. Specifically, this study measured whether the level of environmental motivation positively determines the attitude and the frequency with which one intends to purchase environmentally friendly products. Appendix 1 includes the scientific article about this study . In the second study, two advertisements about the environment were tested with different combinations of valence (positive or negative) and message framing (gain or loss frame) in a sample of environmentally motivated people (who conduct environmentally friendly behaviour). The aim of this second study was to identify, after an affective evaluation of the message, which combination is most persuasive in order to generate a positive attitude toward purchasing sustainable products. Appendix 2 incorporates the scientific article that includes this study . The third study evaluated subjects¿ emotional processing after viewing an experimental message designed with varying combinations of valence and framing. The study concentrated on identifying possible differential patterns between self-motivated and unmotivated individuals. Also, the possible influence of socio-demographic variables in the emotional processing was considered. The evaluation was performed with different techniques (including self-report and psycho-physiological), identifying the potential dissociations generated between them. Finally, the study investigated whether or not emotional processing generates different levels of scepticism. Appendix 3 includes the scientific article that explains this study. The key results from each study are listed below: 1. From the first study: Individual environmental motivation positively and directly influenced the attitude towards the purchase of environmentally friendly products; and influenced positively and indirectly, through attitude, the degree of frequency with which one intends to purchase products that respect the environment. Therefore, these findings support claims made by various authors that motivation is an internal factor that stimulates individual behaviour, determining which behaviours are chosen from among all possible actions (Moisander, 2007; Pelletier et al., 2011). 2. From the second study: Motivated individuals were positively influenced by the different organic advertising messages (which had different valence and gain/loss frame, but in which the remaining elements of the message were constant). The message with positive valence and gain frame resulted in higher levels of persuasion in terms of a positive attitude towards buying organic products. These results are in line with those obtained by various authors who analyzed the persuasion of those items separately (Latimer et al., 2007; Lai and Kuo, 2007; Yi and Baumgartner, 2008; Spence and Pidgeon, 2010). 3. From the third study: a. The messages, with different combinations of framing and valence, provoked different emotional patterns. The message with positive valence and gain frame activated the appetitive motivational system, enabling the adoption of approach behaviours. However, the message with negative valence and loss frame activated emotional processing characterized by activation of the aversive motivational system, creating a state of malaise and a defensive orientation. According to these results, a message with positive valence and gain frame would be more appropriate to generate green behaviour. These results provide a scientific explanation as to why the messages with positive valence and gain frame have been reported to be more effective in several studies. b. There were some discrepancies in the results obtained through self-report and psycho-physiological methods, such as more pronounced differences for those who viewed the message with positive valence and gain frame, so it is advisable to take into account the psycho-physiological measures, as they are objective and automatic and not under the subjects¿ control (Stewart and Furse, 1982; Ravaja, 2004; Poels and Dewitte, 2006). c. The environmental motivation variable significantly influenced some aspects of emotional processing when subjects viewed the experimental messages. Specifically, people who were already environmentally motivated reported greater involvement and interest and felt more dominated (or controlled) when watching the messages than the unmotivated sample. However, although both groups (motivated and unmotivated) showed a similar level of emotional stimulation when viewing the different messages, the unmotivated sample showed a different emotional pattern while watching the message with positive valence and final gain frame. Therefore, the motivational system activated (appetitive or aversive) cannot be conclusively determined. d. The gender variable also significantly influenced emotional processing while viewing the experimental ads, with women reporting greater sensitivity and involvement with any message. Additionally, the aversive motivational system was more intensely activated when women saw a message with negative valence and a final loss frame as compared to men. In addition, unmotivated women were more emotionally aroused when viewing the messages, as compared to motivated men, who showed lower levels of emotional stimulation. e. Evaluation of the affective dimension of advertising influenced the level of environmental scepticism generated. f. Messages with positive valence and gain frame resulted in lower levels of reported environmental scepticism. In light of these results, four important conclusions can be drawn: (i) Motivation plays an important role in understanding decision-making related to ecological behaviour at the individual level. (ii) The combined elements of ecological advertising campaign messages determine the effectiveness of advertising, stimulating different emotional response and processing systems. (iii) The type of emotion generated (positive or negative) while viewing advertising campaigns plays an important role in determining decisions related to the adoption of green behaviour. (iv)Psycho-physiological measures are necessary and relevant to analyze the effectiveness of green advertising.