Ambivalent attitude towards green products evidence from vietnam

Truong Duong Tam & Angelina Le Nhat Hanh | Ambivalent attitude towards green products: Evidence from Vietnam TRUONG DUONG TAM International School of Business | University of Economics HCMC – tam.truong@isb.edu.vn ANGELINA LE NHAT HANH University of Economics HCMC – hanh.ln@ueh.edu.vn Abstract This study explores the predictors of consumers’ ambivalent attitude towards green products which in turn affect their resistance to change Particularly, the roles of negative factors including greenwashing, consumer skepticism, green confusion, and green risk on determining consumers’ ambivalent attitude towards green products are examined In addition, how ambivalent attitude affects consumers’ resistance to change from non-green to green products is also investigated A sample of 310 consumers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam was surveyed by ad hoc quotas sampling method with two controlled characteristics of age and gender to test the theoretical model Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data The results indicate that all predictors have positive influences on consumers’ ambivalent attitude towards green products In which, green confusion has the strongest effect, followed by consumer skepticism and greenwashing, while green risk possesses the least effect on ambivalent attitude Furthermore, ambivalent attitude towards green products is found to significantly increase consumers’ resistance to change This study provides practical implications for business managers regarding the ambivalent attitude of consumers by focusing on their negative perceptions, from which appropriate business strategies are suggested to approach the target green consumers Moreover, this study is a pioneer that simultaneously examines a variety of negative antecedents which belong to green business activities and consumer characteristics In addition, the role of resistance to change as a consequence of ambivalent attitude is newly studied in the context of green consumer behaviors Keywords: ambivalent attitude towards green products; greenwashing; consumer skepticism; green confusion; green risk; resistance to change Introduction The world is facing a number of challenges for survival due to the climate change in which the increasing unpredictable weather conditions and environmental problems such as global warming, pollution and land degradation have a significant impact on people’s lives and communities (Gallina, 2016) The main cause of these abnormal phenomena which has been widely reported by scientists and ecological organizations is carbon emission that is primarily caused by human activities (Dube et al., 2016) Reducing carbon emission as well as its negative effects for the environment is a shared responsibility not only of nations but also of organizations, companies, and of each individual The global community thus has made considerable efforts to bring environmental issues on the agenda at international and national levels At macro level, many nations have put in place legislation with specific policies and goals to raise public concerns about the environment and promote a low-carbon economy (Simoes et al., 2017) As a result, consumers are encouraged to use green products that help minimize the negative effects on the environment At individual level, although people are having more and more environmental concerns (Schultz et al., 2005), they not necessarily translate these concerns into actions, leading to a deep chasm between environmental concerns and purchasing green products (Chang, 2012) Individuals may adopt positive and negative evaluations towards an issue or object at the same time; having these mixed feelings is called ambivalence According to Cacio ppo et al (1997), ambivalent attitude towards an object is formed when people hold simultaneously both positive and negative evaluations Regarding to green consumption, consumers might have an ambivalent attitude towards green products caused by simultaneously emerging positive and negative evaluations of such products According to Chang (2012), the positive evaluation can be attributable to consumers’ perception that being committed to green products is an efficient way of reacting to their concerns about the environment Nevertheless, consumers may have a number of negative feelings and assessments toward green products Because of unclear green claims of companies, consumers may reveal their suspicion about green attributes and eco-products, and show skepticism towards green marketing in general or about green advertisements in particular Some of the doubts may come from consumers questioning whether the products are really green or greenwashing) Therefore, these just labeled “green” (i.e doubts will drive consumers to develop a negative perception of and attitude toward green products, making them hesitate to take green actions or resist buying green products (Haenze, 2001) Ambivalent attitude has long been considered as an interesting topic in social psychology, typically in the relationship between attitude and intention or attitude and behavior (Conner et al., 2002) Several researchers have studied the measurement of ambivalent attitude towards an object or behavior (Priester & Petty, 1996; Armitage & Conner, 2000) as well as the vital role of ambivalence on predicting consumers’ behavioral intention for healthy eating, fair-trade products and medical tourism in the marketing field (Conner et al., 2003; Chatzidakis et al., 2016; Kim & Um, 2016) Nevertheless, in the context of green marketing, there is a scarce study examining factors that drive consumers’ ambivalent attitude towards green products, except the study of Chang (2012) According to Chang, negative perceptions towards green products such as consumer skepticism, perceived high price, and perceived lower quality are the drivers of consumer ambivalent attitudes However, consumers might also have negative perception toward the advertising and company (Horiuchi et al., 2009; Mohr et al., 1998; Mitchell & Papavassiliou, 1999; Mitchell, 1999) Therefore, this study will investigate a more variety of negative perceptions which include green washing, green confusion, green risk and consumer skepticism Moreover, the consumers’ resistance to change as a consequence of ambivalent attitude towards green marketing is also examined in our research framework; this studied relationship has only been studied in the context of organizational and technological changes (Oreg & Sverdlik, 2011; Schiavone, 2012) This study contributes to the extant knowledge pertaining to consumers’ ambivalent attitude through the identification of the predicting roles of some new variables, including greenwashing, consumer skepticism, green confusion, and green risk regarding ambivalent attitude Next, it examines the role of resistance to change as a consequence of ambivalent attitude towards green products Finally, this is a pioneer for the examination of consumers’ ambivalent attitudes towards green products in the context of Vietnam The rest of the paper is followed by the literature review and hypotheses development, research method, hypothesis testing and discussion Literature review and hypothesis development 2.1 2.1 Theoretical background The theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957) plays a significant role in the history of social psychology and has been applied in many other research domains, especially, when studying the behavior of consumers (Bawa & Kansal, 2008) Festinger (1957) used the term cognitive to refer to thinking, belief or attitude while dissonance stands for inconsistency or conflict Cognitive dissonance therefore appears when people feel inconsistent with their belief, idea and/or attitude when they receive a lot of information that conflicts with their existing belief or attitude The theory implications have been taken a view to examine consumers’ indecisive state in the prepurchasing process in marketing (Koller & Salzberger, 2007; Gan & Ding, 2014) Gan & Ding (2014) has found that consumer’s dissonance before engaging the purchase is linked with apprehensive about uncertain outcomes, ambiguous information, unfamiliar products, for example, green products, which from alternatives The conflict between knowledge and belief occurs when people hold both positive and negative attitudes towards an object or action – called as ambivalent attitude (Nordgren et al., 2006) As for green consumption, consumers may experience a similar process in their decision making process Consumers might perceive the importance of their green purchases on supporting green business and protecting the environment which help to form their positive attitude toward green products However, there may be some suspicions that eco-product attributes or green claims of firms are misleading These doubts reflect consumers’ negative perception toward green advertisings and companies and can be manifested by their beliefs on the company greenwashing, their skepticism, confusion, perceived risk of green advertisings/attributes Consequently, ambivalent attitude toward green products should be approached by coexistence positive and negative perceptions However, previous researches also noted that a negative evaluation is more likely to account for ambivalent attitude than a positive one (Cacioppo et al., 1997) According to Yang & Unnava (2016), the inner conflicting or ambivalent attitudes also make consumers feel discomfort in the purchasing choice, e.g.between green and nongreen products 2.2 Attitude and ambivalent attitude Attitude is defined as the psychological tendency towards an object, expressed by an evaluation ranging from favorable to unfavorable (Pattarin & Cosma, 2012) On the one hand, attitude has been considered as unidimensional and captured by a bipolar continuum; it means the attitude of an individual may be neutral, positive or negative towards an object In this regard, the positive and negative evaluations of individuals are reciprocally activated and changeable, i.e., when the negative evaluation towards an object increases, the positive evaluation should decrease Accordingly, this evaluation process “ranges along a single continuum between two endpoints: from maximally positive (minimally negative) to maximally negative (minimally positive)” (Cacioppo et al., 1997) On the other hand, many researchers have suggested that people’s attitude may be a bidimensional construct which holds simultaneously both positive and negative sides (Thompson et al., 1995; Armitage & Conner, 2000; Conner & Sparks, 2002) It is assumed that the positive and negative evaluations can be co-activated at the same time in a bivariate scale In other words, in bivariate evaluative space, the positive and negative evaluations of the individual can be co-existed, which are not always resolved and assessed by self-perception, leaving the individual in a conflicting ambivalence (Cacioppo et al., 1997) It is shown that the attitude of an individual can be clearly identified and captured within a bivariate scale rather than a bipolar continuum Ambivalent attitude is defined as the state of an individual when s/he “is inclined to give it [an attitude object] equivalently strong positive or negative evaluations” (Thompson et al., 1995, p 367) In specific, ambivalent attitude towards an object emerges when people experience simultaneously positive and negative evaluations (Scott, 1968) For instance, people have ambivalent towards recycling when because they perceive that recycling is both meaningful and waste of time (Ojala, 2008) Even though ambivalent attitude is attributable to both positive and negative perceptions, the negative evaluation has more weight and possesses a strong association with ambivalence than the positive one (Cacioppa et al., 1997; Chang, 2012) In other words, the greater a negative perception is held by a consumer, the greater is the chance of feeling ambivalent Greenwashing, consumer skepticism, green confusion and green risk are negative aspects related to green products, therefore these factors are postulated as the determinants of ambivalent attitude towards green products and the detail arguments for each determinant are discussed in the following sections 2.3 Hypothesis development Greenwashing and ambivalent attitude towards green products Greenwashing is defined as the act of misleading or deceiving consumers with false claims about a firm’s environmental practices and impacts (Chen & Chang, 2013) Recently, a number of business firms turns their attention towards the green segment/greenization as a mainstream for their marketing strategy (Moreno & Moreno, 2016; Yadav et al., 2016) to response to an increasing concerns about the environment from consumers Beside the righteous firms who provide accurate/verifiable, reliable and sufficient claims and information regarding their pro-environmental activities to the public, there is evidence that most green claims of self-declared green enterprises are dubious and deceptive (Segev et al., 2016) According to TerraChoice (2009), there are seven sins which involve in misleading green claims: sin of the hidden trade-off, sin of no proof, sin of vagueness, sin of worshiping fake labels, sin of irrelevance, sin of lesser of two evils and sin of fibbing Based on these criteria, a survey in 2010 showed that more than 98 per cent of consumer products claiming to be green were found to commit at least one of the “sins of greenwashing” (Du, 2015; TerraChoice, 2009) As more and more companies use false claims about their green practices to improve/shape their image as more environmentally friendly one, greenwashing becomes a prevalent phenomenon, leading to consumers’ distrust Green claims can cover information associated with the green attributes of products and corporate environmental activities that are presented and advertised to the public (Vu et al., 2013) The purpose of green claims or communication is to provide adequate information helping consumers perceive clearly about the greenness of the company as well as its products However, maybe only positive environmental information or activities are fully disclosed while the negative ones are limited or even hidden (Lyon & Maxwell, 2011) Consumers may find that such green claims are usually exaggerated or misleading or deceiving They cannot distinguish between authentic green companies and companies which pretend to protect the environment or fail in turning their green claims into action This negatively leads to consumers’ perceived deception of disinformation or false greenrelated messages which cause their conflicting feelings about green enterprises as well as green products Thus, greenwashing can cause an ambiguous attitude of consumers towards green products (Chen & greenwashing the Chang, 2012), the higher degree of company committed, the higher degree of ambivalent attitude towards green products is perceived by consumers Thus, the following hypothesis is proposed: H1 Greenwashing is positively associated with ambivalent attitude Consumer skepticism and ambivalent attitude toward green products Consumer skepticism toward information on product labels refers to a general inclination to doubt information provided on the front of products packages by manufacturers (Fenko et al., 2016) In context of greenization, this tendency occurs when individual express their suspicions/doubts toward environmental information presented on eco-product packages According to Lewicki et al (1998), skepticism is viewed as a part of human nature which facilitates consumer protecting themselves against potential detrimental impacts in the future Hence, consumers naturally set defensive mechanism toward any perceived information (e.g environmental information on product label); especially convincing one from others to prevent negative outcomes Similarly, they use defensive attitude to approach the source of and the motives behind provided information Contrary to marketing perspectives, consumers may suspect whether information appearing on green product label (Mohr et al., 1998) is accuracy or just persuasive them in the purpose of driving the sale or maximizing the profit It is noteworthy that the message formulation also plays the vital role in consumer skepticism (Kim & Lee, 2009) Qui et al (2012) found that consumers are likely to pay less trust on positive available information than negative one It is explained that the more positive environmental information on product package the manufactures send out; the more negative perception consumers identify them as marketing tactics In addition, it must be pointed out that consumers’ bias, especially negative perceptions are able to be widespread toward the whole green marketing (Zhang et al., 2016) through consumer’s cognitive process, leading to high consumer skepticism toward information on eco-product label Since consumers’ evaluation is firstly facilitated by information on the product package (Bialkova et al., 2014) skepticism might lead them to negative attitude toward environmentally friendly products in assessing process Obviously, consumer skepticism toward information on green product label may alter product evaluation Consequently, skepticism toward presented information on label is perceived at 4.2 Theoretical implications Firstly, this study enriches the generalizability of ambivalent attitude, and confirms robustness of cognitive dissonance theory not only in psychology but also in the environmental field by valid data collected in Vietnam The result indicates that the attitude of consumers can be captured within bipolar scale With the development of green era nowadays, ambivalent attitude is considered as the barrier for the adoption of new products for reducing adverse impact on our environment Hence, it is necessary to catch up ambivalence as the important attitude of consumer besides existing concepts Secondly, this research demonstrates that negative evaluations play a more powerful role on formation of attitudinal ambivalence, compared with positive attitudes (Cacioppo et al., 1997) by investigating the new negative antecedents such as greenwashing, consumer skepticism, green confusion, and green risk Thirdly, there is no prior study exploring the consequence of ambivalent attitude toward green products Previous researches have just focused on exploring the measurement for ambivalent attitude (Priester & Petty, 1996; Armitage & Conner, 2000) as well as the vital moderating role of ambivalence within other theories such as the theory of planned behavior (Conner et al 2002; Conner et al., 2003) to predict consumers’ behavioral intention in marketing This study indicates that there is a significant relationship between ambivalent attitude and resistance to change, extending more specifically consequence of ambivalence for green marketing Fourthly, this research offers an initial attempt to apply ambivalent attitude toward green products in context of Vietnam This study develops model to explain the factors that account for ambivalence and how ambivalent attitude affects resistance to change It also provides useful evidence and result for manager as well as green enterprises in reducing resistance to change of consumer The finding reveals that in order to minimize consumer’s ambivalence, companies need to focus on negative antecedents and reduce them When ambivalence is decreased, resistance to change would be decreased, leading to higher green consumption In addition, the conceptual model gives marketers guidance on what to look for and the areas where attention may be required 4.3 Managerial implications The main implication in this study is how to decline ambivalent attitude toward green products in order to reduce resistance to change of consumer by taking negative 240 | ICUEH2017 antecedents in consideration regarding their level of influence As discussed previously, green confusion manifests the strongest association with ambivalence; hence, green marketers as well as green enterprises need to systematically identify the sources of green confusion for eliminating (i.e ambiguous information on product) by two main issues, including jardon and no proof regarding to green features (Horuichi et al., 2009) First, jargon refers to the situation where green feature on label or product can only be checked or understood by scientists or scholars, leading to consumers’ difficulties in searching or discriminating green attributes between green and non-green products According to Warlop et al., (2005), consumers suffer a welfare loss because their evaluation is impaired due to perceived ambiguity confusion Because consumers cannot understand green attributes on products which differentiate them and nongreen products, they are likely to experience dissatisfaction with the look-a-like products that increasing perceived ambiguity confusion Hence, it is suggested that the green enterprises should make their products outstanding with green features explained by appropriate and convincing methods In addition, it should be clearly explained the impact of each green attribute contained in products on the environment It will help consumer easily recognize which one is green or not and make evaluation which product meets their demand without confusion Moreover, retailers or storekeepers who directly communicate with end users should be equipped sufficient knowledge and information about green products by companies’ effective training so that they can convey or provide them for consumer in order to decrease their confusion Consumers may avoid misunderstandings if store personnel are clearer and more helpful; moreover, usage instructions and package information were less ambiguous and easier to understand Secondly, no proof contends to the situation when consumers perceive these green features could be right but they cannot find the evidence? Without tested information is approved by prestigious third parties, consumers would experience selfconfusion It is suggested that most green companies should establish official definitions for the use of potentially confusing terms It means efficiency or performance in minimizing harmful to environment of products should be clearly occurred on it label, and not in general; it must be specified and approved by specialized departments such as Ministry of Industry and Trade, Ministry of Public Health, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment or Ministry of Science and Technology Consumers Truong Duong Tam & Angelina Le Nhat Hanh | 245 and evidences so that have to be obtained enough information they can make choice of products or brands which are really good for themselves as well as for the environment without confusion For example, to electricity saving equipment, ecomaterials and green attributes of product should be fully printed on label such as how many percentages electronic saved and green attributes tested by which department before they are released to the marketplace With complete and valid information, consumers avoid their confusion causing deceptive claims, reducing ambivalent attitude toward green products Turning to consumer skepticism, the result suggested that skepticism consistently account for ambivalent attitude toward green products in context of Vietnam Green marketers should realize that consumer skepticism is as copy strategy which impacted by their bias toward positive information on product package Thus, consumers should be equipped with accurate knowledge which attributes is really green and which is not in product label by enterprises By this way, companies help consumers have overview about eco-products not only their own product but also green terms in general In other words, it should be explained which material in product does less harm to the environment For instance, Revert additive’s uses should be made clear and specific on plastic bags designed to biodegrade Biodegradable time is three to nine months or longer in which conditions; and which effect on the environment when its useful life is over In addition, it is suggested that verbal claims have more influence on consumer’s evaluation than numerical claims (Mohr et al., 1998) Nevertheless, verbal claims which indicate the term of “very high in sodium” evoke more opportunities to mislead consumers than numeric claims which show the term of “contains 320 mg of sodium” Although numeric claims require more processing effort and knowledge in order to interpret information, it would convey as well as make clear accurate green attributes, leading to low skepticism toward ecoproducts Besides, allowed limitation or standard criteria should be come along with numeric claims so that consumers have basic knowledge in evaluation or comparison toward green attributes By preventing vague claims on package label, green enterprises would minimize adverse effect of skepticism, leading to low ambivalent attitude toward environmentally friendly products As to greenwashing, one of predictors accounting for ambivalent attitude, it is a must to reduce consumers’ negative perception toward green enterprises, leading low ambivalence toward green products Thus, exploring what consumers are sensitive about green companies is a first requirement From this starting point, green companies may match consumers’ ethical expectations by their specific marketing plan In specific, such 242 | ICUEH2017 organizations should not commit as much as sins of greenwashing (TerraChoice, 2010), it would enhance consumers’ credibility Most of green statements should be clear, honest without ambiguous information It is suggested that the best policy for green enterprises is “do as you say” because it is the short and sustainable strategy to approach consumers Regarding to green risk, to decrease this negative perception, consumer’s reliability toward green product should be increased It is suggested that retailers should be trained with sufficient knowledge about green attributes in order to maximize perceived value and minimize perceived risk toward green product For more specific, producers should issue financial, and guarantee policies and technical support in order to assure value of product 4.4 Limitations and directions for future research Although this study has a good contribution to research background of Vietnam, it is not free of limitations, which introduce future research opportunities Firstly, this study verifies the hypotheses by means of a questionnaire survey, only providing cross-sectional data, so that this study cannot observe the dynamic change of greenwashing, consumer skepticism, green confusion, green risk, ambivalent attitude towards green products and resistance to change in the different stages of the environmental regulations in the world through longitudinal data Therefore, future research can set forth toward the longitudinal study to find out the differences of greenwashing, consumer skepticism, green confusion, green risk, ambivalent attitude towards green products and resistance to change in the different stages of the environmental regulations in the world Secondly, the sample comprised of 310 consumers of Ho Chi Minh City This sample tests only a very small proportion of the entire population of Vietnam Therefore, research studies with much larger sample size on the whole of Vietnam would be required to ensure more appropriate generalization of the findings of the study For further, this research should be undertaken in markets of another countries in order to compare and implement building framework model as well as measurement scales Thirdly, the terms of green product explored in this study is general without distinguishing green product of agriculture or industry section Hence, further research can make comparison between green product of agriculture and industry in order to collect more 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