IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gam/jsusta/v13y2021i12p6819-d576195.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

(Not) Doing the Right Things for the Wrong Reasons: An Investigation of Consumer Attitudes, Perceptions, and Willingness to Pay for Bio-Based Plastics

Author

Listed:
  • Maria V. Zwicker

    (Department of Social Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 129-B, 1018 WT Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

  • Cameron Brick

    (Department of Social Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 129-B, 1018 WT Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

  • Gert-Jan M. Gruter

    (Industrial Sustainable Chemistry, University of Amsterdam, Science Park 904, 1098 XH Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    Avantium NV, Zekeringstraat 29, 1014 BV Amsterdam, The Netherlands)

  • Frenk van Harreveld

    (Department of Social Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Nieuwe Achtergracht 129-B, 1018 WT Amsterdam, The Netherlands
    National Institute for Public Health and the Environment (RIVM), Antonie van Leeuwenhoeklaan 9, 3721 MA Bilthoven, The Netherlands)

Abstract

Fossil-based plastics are significant contributors to global warming through CO 2 emissions. For more sustainable alternatives to be successful, it is important to ensure that consumers become aware of the benefits of innovations such as bio-based plastics, in order to create demand and a willingness to initially pay more. Given that consumer attitudes and (inaccurate) beliefs can influence the uptake of such new technologies, we investigated participants’ attitudes towards fossil-based and bio-based plastic, their perceived importance of recycling both types of plastic, their willingness to pay, and their perceptions of bio-based plastic in four studies (total N = 961). The pre-registered fourth study experimentally manipulated information about bio-based plastic and measured willingness to pay for different types of plastic. The results suggest participants hold very favourable attitudes and are willing to pay more for bio-based products. However, they also harbour misconceptions, especially overestimating bio-based plastic’s biodegradability, and they find it less important to recycle bio-based than fossil-based plastic. Study 4 provided evidence that educating consumers about the properties of bio-based plastic can dispel misconceptions and retain a favourable attitude and a high willingness to pay. We found mixed evidence for the effect of attitudes on willingness to pay, suggesting other psychological factors may also play a role. We discuss how attitudes and misconceptions affect the uptake of new sustainable technologies such as bio-based plastics and consumers’ willingness to purchase them.

Suggested Citation

  • Maria V. Zwicker & Cameron Brick & Gert-Jan M. Gruter & Frenk van Harreveld, 2021. "(Not) Doing the Right Things for the Wrong Reasons: An Investigation of Consumer Attitudes, Perceptions, and Willingness to Pay for Bio-Based Plastics," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-23, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:12:p:6819-:d:576195
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/12/6819/pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/12/6819/
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Caroline Orset & Nicolas Barret & Aurélien Lemaire, 2017. "How consumers of plastic water bottles are responding to environmental policies?," Post-Print hal-01500900, HAL.
    2. Michal Carrington & Benjamin Neville & Gregory Whitwell, 2010. "Why Ethical Consumers Don’t Walk Their Talk: Towards a Framework for Understanding the Gap Between the Ethical Purchase Intentions and Actual Buying Behaviour of Ethically Minded Consumers," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 97(1), pages 139-158, November.
    3. Palan, Stefan & Schitter, Christian, 2018. "Prolific.ac—A subject pool for online experiments," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(C), pages 22-27.
    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. Francesca Di Cicco & Maike Loos & Isa Vos & Rebecca Gibson & Yuvesveri Naidoo & Susan Gifford & Monique A. M. Smeets, 2024. "The Smell of Sustainability: Understanding Consumers’ Acceptability of Recycled Plastic Packaging with an Off-Odor," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 16(12), pages 1-26, June.
    2. Walter Leal Filho & Jelena Barbir & Pınar Gökçin Özuyar & Enrique Nunez & Jose Manuel Diaz-Sarachaga & Bertrand Guillaume & Rosley Anholon & Izabela Simon Rampasso & Julia Swart & Luis Velazquez & The, 2022. "Assessing Provisions and Requirements for the Sustainable Production of Plastics: Towards Achieving SDG 12 from the Consumers’ Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-23, December.
    3. M. Lahandi Baskoro & Benny Tjahjono & Macarena Beltran & Anna Bogush & Yichuan Wang, 2024. "The imperative of communication signals in boosting business strategies of the bioplastic packaging industry," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 307-334, February.
    4. Antonis Skouloudis & Chrysovalantis Malesios & Demetris-Francis Lekkas, 2024. "Notes from the Field: Public Views on Bioplastics-Findings from Greece," Circular Economy and Sustainability, Springer, vol. 4(1), pages 791-813, March.
    5. Yuuki Yoshimoto & Koki Kishimoto & Kanchan Kumar Sen & Takako Mochida & Andrew Chapman, 2023. "Toward Economically Efficient Carbon Reduction: Contrasting Greening Plastic Supply Chains with Alternative Energy Policy Approaches," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(17), pages 1-19, September.
    6. Paul Hindley & O. Ashton Morgan, 2023. "The Role of Respondent Certainty and Attribute Non-Attendance on the Willingness to Pay for the Attributes of Recyclable Aluminum Bottled Water," Working Papers 23-06, Department of Economics, Appalachian State University.
    7. George Thomas, 2022. "Corporate Social Responsibility as a Sustainable Business Practice: A Study among Generation Z Customers of Indian Luxury Hotels," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(24), pages 1-13, December.

    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. Hoffmann, Stefan & Lasarov, Wassili & Reimers, Hanna, 2022. "Carbon footprint tracking apps. What drives consumers' adoption intention?," Technology in Society, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    2. Ni, Dan & Jiwen Song, Lynda & Zheng, Xiaoming & Zhu, Jinlong & Zhang, Mengyi & Xu, Lingxiao, 2022. "Extending a helping hand: How receiving gratitude makes a difference in employee performance during a crisis," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 149(C), pages 967-982.
    3. Julie Bayle-Cordier & Loïc Berger & Rayan Elatmani & Massimo Tavoni, 2023. "Breath, Love, Walk? The Impact of Mindfulness Interventions on Climate Policy Support and Environmental Attitudes," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-29, July.
    4. Morais, Ana Catarina & Ishida, Akira & Matsuda, Ruriko, 2024. "Ethical food consumption drivers in Japan. A S–O-R framework application using PLS-SEM with a MGA assessment based on clustering," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    5. Yan, Min & Filieri, Raffaele & Gorton, Matthew, 2021. "Continuance intention of online technologies: A systematic literature review," International Journal of Information Management, Elsevier, vol. 58(C).
    6. Katja H. Brunk & Cara Boer, 2020. "How do Consumers Reconcile Positive and Negative CSR-Related Information to Form an Ethical Brand Perception? A Mixed Method Inquiry," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 161(2), pages 443-458, January.
    7. Valentina Carfora & Patrizia Catellani, 2022. "Advertising Innovative Sustainable Fashion: Informational, Transformational, or Sustainability Appeal?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(23), pages 1-21, December.
    8. Zou, Lili Wenli & Chan, Ricky Y.K., 2019. "Why and when do consumers perform green behaviors? An examination of regulatory focus and ethical ideology," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 113-127.
    9. Elena Kossmann & Mónica Gómez-Suárez, 2018. "Decision-making processes for purchases of ethical products: gaps between academic research and needs of marketing practitioners," International Review on Public and Nonprofit Marketing, Springer;International Association of Public and Non-Profit Marketing, vol. 15(3), pages 353-370, September.
    10. Eva Wanek & Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde & Alda Mari, 2024. "Desire, moral evaluation or sense of duty: The modal framing of stated preference elicitation," Environmental Values, , vol. 33(4), pages 434-459, August.
    11. Calvin Thigpen & Kelcie Ralph & Nicholas J. Klein & Anne Brown, 2023. "Can information increase support for transportation reform? Results from an experiment," Transportation, Springer, vol. 50(3), pages 893-912, June.
    12. Tiziano Tempesta & Daniel Vecchiato, 2019. "Analysis of the Factors that Influence Olive Oil Demand in the Veneto Region (Italy)," Agriculture, MDPI, vol. 9(7), pages 1-17, July.
    13. Khalid Mehmood & Fauzia Jabeen & Shilpa Iyanna & Hui Zhang & Patrice Piccardi & Nagendra Singh Nehra, 2024. "Exploring drivers of behavioral willingness to reduce plastic consumption and socially responsible consumption behavior: A stimulus–organism–behavior–consequence paradigm based environmental managemen," Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 31(4), pages 3098-3118, July.
    14. Nieves García-de-Frutos & José Manuel Ortega-Egea & Javier Martínez-del-Río, 2018. "Anti-consumption for Environmental Sustainability: Conceptualization, Review, and Multilevel Research Directions," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 148(2), pages 411-435, March.
    15. Can, Ali Selcuk & Ekinci, Yuksel & Pino, Giovanni, 2021. "Joint brand advertising for emerging heritage sites," Annals of Tourism Research, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    16. Billur Aksoy & Christopher S. Carpenter & Dario Sansone, 2025. "Understanding Labor Market Discrimination Against Transgender People: Evidence from a Double List Experiment and a Survey," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 71(1), pages 659-677, January.
    17. Annika Hillebrandt & Daniel L. Brady & Maria Francisca Saldanha & Laurie J. Barclay, 2023. "The Paradox of Paranoia: How One’s Own Self-Interested Unethical Behavior Can Spark Paranoia and Reduce Affiliative Behavior Toward Coworkers," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 184(1), pages 159-173, April.
    18. Feess, Eberhard & Schilling, Thomas & Timofeyev, Yuriy, 2023. "Misreporting in teams with individual decision making: The impact of information and communication," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 209(C), pages 509-532.
    19. Natalia Stanulewicz & Emily Knox & Melanie Narayanasamy & Noureen Shivji & Kamlesh Khunti & Holly Blake, 2019. "Effectiveness of Lifestyle Health Promotion Interventions for Nurses: A Systematic Review," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(1), pages 1-36, December.
    20. Alex Hiller & Tony Woodall, 2019. "Everything Flows: A Pragmatist Perspective of Trade-Offs and Value in Ethical Consumption," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 157(4), pages 893-912, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    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:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:12:p:6819-:d:576195. 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: MDPI Indexing Manager (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.mdpi.com .

    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.