Construal Level and Construal Fit between Sustainable Products and Environmental Messages: Evidence from an Implicit Association Test and a Field Experiment

Abstract

More sustainable private consumption behaviors represent a huge opportunity to substantially reduce global warming and greenhouse gas emissions (Hanss & Böhm, 2013). Nevertheless, organic food, a particularly important driver for an environmentally more sustainable economy, still remains a niche product (Carrington, Neville, & Whitwell, 2014).

By examining unfitting product communication as one possible cause for the lack of sales of sustainable products, we want to find new ways for encouraging sustainable consumption. According to the Construal Level Theory (CLT; Trope & Liberman, 2010), product communication is more effective if a product message is designed at the same Construal Level at which the product category is typically perceived (e.g., Chang, Zhang, & Xie, 2015). The Construal Level indicates whether a product is represented in human minds as either psychologically distant and abstract (high Construal Level) or close and concrete (low Construal Level). While previous studies showed that sustainability as a concept is perceived at a high Construal Level and rather abstract (e.g., Griffioen, et al., 2016), we expose that sustainable products are depicted on a low Construal Level. Using an Implicit Association Test (Greenwald, McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) with n=216 participants we demonstrate that organic products are associated with a significantly lower Construal Level, i.e. with psychological proximity, compared to conventional products (p<.05). Referring to the idea of the “construal fit” mentioned above, this means, that advertisement messages for sustainable products emphasizing more abstract benefits such as environmental protection are probably not as successful as messages pointing on personal or short-term benefits. A representative survey of German consumers (n=301) asking for their associations with organic products confirmed this assumption: Consumers mostly associate health issues with organic food, which are perceived at a low Construal Level (e.g. Lucke & Koenigstorfer, 2018).

We further examined in a field study with real purchase data on the example of organic milk whether the association of sustainable products with a low Construal Level also implies that concrete, low-construal messages are better suited to increase consumption behavior than high-construal messages. For a period of two weeks, we placed digital screens showing either abstract (high-construal, e.g. “Organic milk – because we take responsibility for our future environment!”) or concrete (low-construal, e.g. “Organic milk – because it contains 60% more healthy omega-3 fatty acids than conventional milk.”) product messages for organic milk at the entrance of grocery stores. We compared the amount of milk purchased in the different experimental conditions and confirmed our hypothesis: Customers bought significantly more organic milk, when it was advertised with low-construal messages than when it was promoted with similar high-construal messages (p<.05).

Thus, the results emphasize that a more differentiated approach is required when applying the CLT to the context of sustainability. Depending on the specific research object (sustainability vs. products), differences in the information processing can be expected. Secondly, we showed how this finding can be applied in practice to create more efficient advertising messages: When designing advertising message, a construal fit with the Construal Level associated with the advertised product should be pursued. Organic products should not, as it is often done, be promoted with rather abstract future-focused sustainability claims, but rather low-construal aspects such as health benefits should be emphasized.

Keywords: Sustainable Consumption, Construal Level Theory, Implicit Association Test