478
JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH
reasoning account and ran counter to the absolute amount of paper account: when a layer of paper was added to plas- tic packaging, consumers perceived the packaging as more environmentally friendly. The addition of a layer of paper to paper packaging had no effect on its perceived environ- mental friendliness.
bad for the environment on two separate three-item 7-point scales (web appendix E). The order of scales capturing the beliefs related to plastic and paper was counterbalanced. Finally, participants reported their age and gender. Results To test our predictions, we ran an ANCOVA with pack- aging type, participants’ standardized explicit belief scores, and their two-way interaction as the independent variables and with the packaging PEF score ( a ¼ 0.95) as the dependent variable. The explicit belief scores were com- puted as the difference between participants’ beliefs about the environmental harm of plastic ( a ¼ 0.94, M ¼ 6.10, SD ¼ 1.10) and their beliefs about the environmental harm of paper ( a ¼ 0.87, M ¼ 3.54, SD ¼ 1.33). Higher explicit belief scores indicated that participants perceived greater differences between the environmental harm of plastic and paper, hereafter referred to as higher “paper ¼ good, plas- tic ¼ bad” belief scores. The analysis revealed a main effect of packaging type ( F (1, 598) ¼ 85.46, p < .001, g p 2 ¼ 0.125) and a signifi- cant interaction between packaging type and explicit beliefs ( F (1, 598) ¼ 6.73, p ¼ .010, g p 2 ¼ 0.011). The main effect of explicit beliefs was not significant ( F (1, 598) ¼ 2.51, p ¼ .114, g p 2 ¼ 0.004). Follow-up contrasts revealed that at the mean value of explicit beliefs, plastic packaging was perceived as less environmentally friendly than plastic þ paper packaging ( M plastic ¼ 3.28, SD ¼ 1.44 vs. M plastic þ paper ¼ 4.37, SD ¼ 1.49, F (1, 598) ¼ 85.46, p < .001, g p 2 ¼ 0.125), rep- licating previous results. Importantly, this effect was stron- ger among participants with higher “paper ¼ good, plastic
STUDY 2B: PEF BIAS AND PAPER– PLASTIC BELIEFS
Study 2b tests the effect of consumers’ beliefs about the environmental impact of paper and plastic on the PEF bias. Our theorizing implies that consumers hold “paper ¼ good, plastic ¼ bad” beliefs. As a result of these beliefs, consum- ers judge plastic þ paper packaging as more environmen- tally friendly than plastic packaging. As such, we can expect that the PEF bias will be stronger among consumers with stronger “paper ¼ good, plastic ¼ bad” beliefs. Method Six hundred three ProlificCo panelists completed this study. One survey was removed because of a duplicate IP, resulting in a final sample of 602 participants ( M age ¼ 35.13, 54% female). Participants were randomly assigned to one of two con- ditions (packaging type: plastic vs. plastic þ paper). In the main task, participants saw a honeycomb packaged in plas- tic or in plastic þ paper (table 7) and rated the perceived environmental friendliness of the honeycomb packaging on the four-item PEF scale. Next, to capture participants’ beliefs about plastic and paper, we asked them to indicate to what extent they believed that plastic and paper were
TABLE7
STUDY 2B: PACKAGING STIMULI
Plastic condition
Plastic+paper condition
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