The impact of social exclusion types on consumers’ green product purchase intentions

Consumers experience feelings of social exclusion in various aspects of their daily lives, including their environmental perspectives and purchasing behaviors. This study examines the impact of two forms of social exclusion—rejection and neglect—on consumers' purchase intentions for green products. Through two pre-experiments and four formal experiments, we found that social exclusion significantly increased consumers’ purchase intention for green products (Experiment 1). Consumers facing rejection had implicit purchase intention for green products, whereas those facing neglect exhibited explicit intentions (Experiment 2). Experiment 3 demonstrates that the need to belong and conspicuous motivation mediate the impact of rejection on implicit and explicit green product purchase intentions, respectively. Experiment 4 shows that with high self-discrepancy, both rejected and neglected consumers explicitly prefer green products; however, under low self-discrepancy, rejected consumers prefer implicitly green products, while neglected consumers prefer explicitly green ones. These findings can inform the development of green product marketing strategies that leverage social factors.