مقاله انگلیسی رایگان در مورد تاثیر تجدید نظر درباره انرژی تجدید پذیر بر رفتار مصرف کننده – امرالد ۲۰۱۷

In a recent survey on sustainable brands, 91 per cent of consumers indicated that companies should become more involved in addressing social and environmental issues rather than making profits only (Sustainable Brands, 2015). Consumers display an increasingly detailed knowledge of renewable-energy-related terms such as carbon footprint, renewable power and carbon offset (Polonsky et al., 2011). These trends present companies with more opportunities to employ an array of green marketing strategies (Aagerup and Nilsson, 2016). The provision of environmentally sustainable “green” products has up, until now, been the response to consumer concerns about the environment from marketing oriented companies. Typically, these are brand made from recycled material or able to be recycled. Yet, at a time where the depletion of finite energy resources is so important to the community, this kind of marketing has never been more ineffectual at helping to solve the problem. This is because the green credentialing of products has become a catchall for so many products that it has lost its meaning as a unique benefit to consumers, a phenomenon known as greenwashing. Thus, it should be no surprise that most consumers do not purchase green products even though the large majority express a high level of environmental concern (Bray et al., 2011). What is more, too many companies attempt to make misleading and pseudo green or renewable energy marketing claims to benefit from being perceived as green (Capital Flows, 2012). The result is an increasingly disillusioned green-minded consumer. A hitherto unconsidered green marketing credential is the use of renewable energy in supply chains. This is an increasingly important consideration in corporate strategy and policy. For example, renewable sources power 93 per cent of Apple’s facilities worldwide and 100 per cent of its data servers (Apple, 2016). Google, which has committed over US$1 billion to renewable energy projects, powers 35 per cent of all operations with renewable energy (Google, 2016). The upsurge in corporate adoption of renewable energy and its incorporation into marketing strategy can be partly attributed to rising consumer interest in sustainability and the environmental credence of their purchases (Plitsos et al., 2017; Polonsky et al., 2011). According to Yadav et al. (2016), environmental marketing strategies can improve corporate reputation. This suggests that businesses may use renewable energy to benefit society as a whole and also improve their bottom line. Such strategies can also reduce transition risk (i.e. the risk that a company will be caught short when regulatory changes penalise non-renewable energy use or prefer renewable energy). In addition, by engaging in sustainable business practices that considered altruistic, a company’s relationships with its stakeholders (i.e. customers, local communities, employees and shareholders) are also strengthened (Hanson, 2005). Many of these assertions have not been tested. We do not know, for example, whether consumers will recognise a “made with renewable energy” claim as an important product benefit. A primary contribution of this paper is to examine the importance of a “made with renewable energy” claim on consumer preferences. Further, we explore who this might work for. In doing so, this research answers calls in the marketing literature to find ways to increase environmental consciousness and eco-friendly behaviour (Brough et al., 2016). It also addresses cross disciplinary calls to examine the value of renewable energy polices from a marketing perspective (Wustenhagen and Menichetti, 2012). The remainder of this paper is organised as follows. Next, we briefly examine the literature on renewable energy and develop some hypotheses. This is followed by a brief explanation of our theoretical framework, and then a section on our experimental method. Finally, we present our empirical results and discussion.