PAPER making! FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF PAPER TECHNOLOGY INTERNATIONAL ® FROM THE PUBLISHERS OF PAPER TE Volume 9, Number 3, 2023
Paper Meets Plastic: The Perceived Environmental Friendliness of Product Packaging TATIANA SOKOLOVA, ARADHNA KRISHNA & TIM DÖRING Packaging waste makes up more than 10% of the landfilled waste in the United States. While consumers often want to make environmentally friendly product choices, we find that their perceptions of the environmental friendliness of product packaging may systematically deviate from its objective environmental friendliness. Eight studies (N ¼ 4,103) document the perceived environmental friendliness (PEF) bias whereby consumers judge plastic packaging with additional paper to be more environmentally friendly than identical plastic packaging without the paper. The PEF bias is driven by consumers’ “pape r ¼ good, plastic ¼ bad” beliefs and by proportional reasoning, wherein packaging with a greater paper -to-plastic proportion is judged as more environmentally friendly. We further show that the PEF bias impacts consumers’ willingness to pay and product choice. Importantly, this bias can be mitigated by a “minimal packaging sticker” intervention, which increases the environmental friendliness perceptions of plastic-only packaging, rendering plastic-packaged products to be preferable to their plastic-plus-paper-packaged counterparts. This research contributes to the packaging literature in marketing and to research on sustainability while offering practical implications for managers and public policy officials. Baruch College, Drexel University, Florida State University, Northeastern University, University of Miami, Marketing in Israel conference, and from discussions at the Tilburg School of Economics and Management Consumer Club. Supplementary materials are included in the web appendix accompanying the online version of this article. Journal of Consumer Research, Inc., Vol.50, 2023 https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucad00 This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/),
The Paper Industry Technical Association (PITA) is an independent organisation which operates for the general benefit of its members – both individual and corporate – dedicated to promoting and improving the technical and scientific knowledge of those working in the UK pulp and paper industry. Formed in 1960, it serves the Industry, both manufacturers and suppliers, by providing a forum for members to meet and network; it organises visits, conferences and training seminars that cover all aspects of papermaking science. It also publishes the prestigious journal Paper Technology International ® and the PITA Annual Review , both sent free to members, and a range of other technical publications which include conference proceedings and the acclaimed Essential Guide to Aqueous Coating .
Article 8 – Packaging
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