IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/bstrat/v30y2021i7p3120-3130.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainable product innovation and changing consumer behavior: Sustainability affordances as triggers of adoption and usage

Author

Listed:
  • Jonatan Pinkse
  • René Bohnsack

Abstract

This conceptual paper argues that for sustainable product innovation to make a contribution to addressing sustainability issues, we need to understand not only why consumers adopt sustainable products but also what makes them use these in sustainable way. To explain how specific product features can change the ways in which consumers engage with sustainable products in the adoption and usage phase, we draw on affordance theory. Affordances refer to the potential for agentic action of users in relation to a technological object. We develop a conceptual framework that explains how sustainable product innovation can lead to the design of sustainability affordances that stimulate adoption and sustainable usage. The framework shows how three forms of agency—material, firm, and user agency—interact and together influence a product's sustainability affordances that drive adoption and a change in consumer behavior. The framework explains how trade‐offs between a product's environmental features and consumer expectations regarding desired functionalities and user experience can be overcome.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonatan Pinkse & René Bohnsack, 2021. "Sustainable product innovation and changing consumer behavior: Sustainability affordances as triggers of adoption and usage," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(7), pages 3120-3130, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:30:y:2021:i:7:p:3120-3130
    DOI: 10.1002/bse.2793
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.2793
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/bse.2793?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Raghu Garud & Arun Kumaraswamy, 1995. "Technological and organizational designs for realizing economies of substitution," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 16(S1), pages 93-109.
    2. René Bohnsack & Ans Kolk & Jonatan Pinkse & Christina M. Bidmon, 2020. "Driving the electric bandwagon: The dynamics of incumbents' sustainable innovation," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(2), pages 727-743, February.
    3. Ken Peattie, 2001. "Golden goose or wild goose? The hunt for the green consumer," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 10(4), pages 187-199, July.
    4. Gerardine DeSanctis & Marshall Scott Poole, 1994. "Capturing the Complexity in Advanced Technology Use: Adaptive Structuration Theory," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 5(2), pages 121-147, May.
    5. Kandaramath Hari, Thushara & Yaakob, Zahira & Binitha, Narayanan N., 2015. "Aviation biofuel from renewable resources: Routes, opportunities and challenges," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 1234-1244.
    6. Raymond F. Zammuto & Terri L. Griffith & Ann Majchrzak & Deborah J. Dougherty & Samer Faraj, 2007. "Information Technology and the Changing Fabric of Organization," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 18(5), pages 749-762, October.
    7. Batalla-Bejerano, Joan & Trujillo-Baute, Elisa & Villa-Arrieta, Manuel, 2020. "Smart meters and consumer behaviour: Insights from the empirical literature," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    8. Tobias Hahn & Frank Figge & Jonatan Pinkse & Lutz Preuss, 2010. "Trade‐offs in corporate sustainability: you can't have your cake and eat it," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(4), pages 217-229, May.
    9. Edgar G. Hertwich, 2005. "Consumption and Industrial Ecology," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 9(1‐2), pages 1-6, January.
    10. Afzaal Ali & Guo Xiaoling & Adnan Ali & Mehkar Sherwani & Farhan Muhammad Muneeb, 2019. "Customer motivations for sustainable consumption: Investigating the drivers of purchase behavior for a green‐luxury car," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(5), pages 833-846, July.
    11. Whitehead, Jake & Franklin, Joel P. & Washington, Simon, 2015. "Transitioning to energy efficient vehicles: An analysis of the potential rebound effects and subsequent impact upon emissions," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 250-267.
    12. Rosa Maria Dangelico, 2016. "Green Product Innovation: Where we are and Where we are Going," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(8), pages 560-576, December.
    13. Wanda J. Orlikowski, 2000. "Using Technology and Constituting Structures: A Practice Lens for Studying Technology in Organizations," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 11(4), pages 404-428, August.
    14. Edgar G. Hertwich, 2005. "Consumption and the Rebound Effect: An Industrial Ecology Perspective," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 9(1‐2), pages 85-98, January.
    15. Rajan Varadarajan, 2017. "Innovating for sustainability: a framework for sustainable innovations and a model of sustainable innovations orientation," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 45(1), pages 14-36, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Widodo Widodo & Mochamad Bruri Triyono & Putu Sudira & Farid Mutohhari, 2023. "Building Sustainable Creative Economy in Society through the Mediation Role of Innovation Behavior," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(14), pages 1-14, July.
    2. Jeremy Galbreath & Chia‐Yang Chang & Daniel Tisch, 2023. "The impact of a proactive environmental strategy on environmentally sustainable practices in service firms: The moderating effect of information use value," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 32(8), pages 5420-5434, December.
    3. René Bohnsack & Christina M. Bidmon & Jonatan Pinkse, 2022. "Sustainability in the digital age: Intended and unintended consequences of digital technologies for sustainable development," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(2), pages 599-602, February.
    4. Jiatong Dai & Guanghua Sheng, 2022. "Advertising strategies and sustainable development: The effects of green advertising appeals and subjective busyness on green purchase intention," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 31(7), pages 3421-3436, November.
    5. Santa, Juana Castro & Drews, Stefan, 2023. "Heuristic processing of green advertising: Review and policy implications," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 206(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Verstegen, Luuk & Houkes, Wybo & Reymen, Isabelle, 2019. "Configuring collective digital-technology usage in dynamic and complex design practices," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 48(8), pages 1-1.
    2. Andrew Burton-Jones & Camille Grange, 2013. "From Use to Effective Use: A Representation Theory Perspective," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 24(3), pages 632-658, September.
    3. Vincent Sennes & Jacques Breillat & Francis Ribeyre & Sandrine Gombert, 2009. "Local policies for reducing the ecological impact of households: the case study of a suburban area in France," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 11(5), pages 1031-1049, October.
    4. Millar, Neal & McLaughlin, Eoin & Börger, Tobias, 2019. "The Circular Economy: Swings and Roundabouts?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 158(C), pages 11-19.
    5. Sulin Ba & Jan Stallaert & Andrew B. Whinston, 2001. "Research Commentary: Introducing a Third Dimension in Information Systems Design—The Case for Incentive Alignment," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 12(3), pages 225-239, September.
    6. Ouyang, Jinlong & Long, Enshen & Hokao, Kazunori, 2010. "Rebound effect in Chinese household energy efficiency and solution for mitigating it," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 5269-5276.
    7. Pamela J. Hinds & Diane E. Bailey, 2003. "Out of Sight, Out of Sync: Understanding Conflict in Distributed Teams," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 14(6), pages 615-632, December.
    8. Wanda J. Orlikowski & C. Suzanne Iacono, 2001. "Research Commentary: Desperately Seeking the “IT” in IT Research—A Call to Theorizing the IT Artifact," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 12(2), pages 121-134, June.
    9. Steinberger, Julia K. & van Niel, Johan & Bourg, Dominique, 2009. "Profiting from negawatts: Reducing absolute consumption and emissions through a performance-based energy economy," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(1), pages 361-370, January.
    10. Uddin, Main & Wang, Liang Choon & Smyth, Russell, 2021. "Do government-initiated energy comparison sites encourage consumer search and lower prices? Evidence from an online randomized controlled experiment in Australia," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 188(C), pages 167-182.
    11. Vita, Gibran & Lundström, Johan R. & Hertwich, Edgar G. & Quist, Jaco & Ivanova, Diana & Stadler, Konstantin & Wood, Richard, 2019. "The Environmental Impact of Green Consumption and Sufficiency Lifestyles Scenarios in Europe: Connecting Local Sustainability Visions to Global Consequences," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1-1.
    12. Sharath Sasidharan & Radhika Santhanam & Daniel J. Brass & Vallabh Sambamurthy, 2012. "The Effects of Social Network Structure on Enterprise Systems Success: A Longitudinal Multilevel Analysis," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 23(3-part-1), pages 658-678, September.
    13. Yosuke Shigetomi & Keisuke Nansai & Shigemi Kagawa & Susumu Tohno, 2016. "Influence of income difference on carbon and material footprints for critical metals: the case of Japanese households," Journal of Economic Structures, Springer;Pan-Pacific Association of Input-Output Studies (PAPAIOS), vol. 5(1), pages 1-19, December.
    14. Daniel Beverungen, 2014. "Exploring the Interplay of the Design and Emergence of Business Processes as Organizational Routines," Business & Information Systems Engineering: The International Journal of WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK, Springer;Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V. (GI), vol. 6(4), pages 191-202, August.
    15. Michiel Bal & Jos Benders & Lander Vermeerbergen, 2022. "‘Bringing the Covert into the Open’: A Case Study on Technology Appropriation and Continuous Improvement," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(10), pages 1-17, May.
    16. Adhikari, Pawan & Upadhaya, Bedanand & Wijethilake, Chaminda & Dhakal Adhikari, Shovita, 2023. "The sociomateriality of digitalisation in Nepalese NGOs," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(5).
    17. Zeeshan Ullah & Ahmad Arslan & Vesa Puhakka, 2021. "Corporate social responsibility strategy, sustainable product attributes, and export performance," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 28(6), pages 1840-1853, November.
    18. Paula Jarzabkowski & Sarah Kaplan, 2015. "Strategy tools-in-use: A framework for understanding “technologies of rationality” in practice," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 36(4), pages 537-558, April.
    19. Jouni Korhonen & Thomas P. Seager, 2008. "Beyond eco‐efficiency: a resilience perspective," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(7), pages 411-419, November.
    20. Kummitha, Rama Krishna Reddy, 2020. "Why distance matters: The relatedness between technology development and its appropriation in smart cities," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 157(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:bstrat:v:30:y:2021:i:7:p:3120-3130. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-0836 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.