Is Sustainability a Liability? Green Marketing and Consumer Beliefs About Eco-Friendly Products
研究量化了消费者认为可持续产品性能较差的“可持续性负担”效应，发现该效应较小且随时间减弱，为政策制定者推广环保产品提供了实证支持。
Prior research has suggested that consumers believe sustainable products tend to underperform compared with those made using traditional methods, a phenomenon referred to as the “sustainability liability.” Despite early conceptual justification and evidence supporting this argument, recent research has not attempted to validate this effect and assess its practical relevance. By employing a variety of scenarios adapted from prior studies, the authors quantify the magnitude of the sustainability-liability effect and show that it is relatively small and unlikely to be meaningful. This research also estimates the boundary conditions to identify scenarios in which a significant sustainability-liability effect might occur. Using archival data, the authors demonstrate that the association between sustainability and inferior product performance has decreased over time, explaining the discrepancy between their findings and prior research. These findings have important public policy implications, providing decision makers with empirical evidence that designing and promoting eco-friendly products can benefit society without detracting from the perceived performance of the company's offerings.