The effect of digital nudging on resistance to a green innovation
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2024-07-01
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en
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The significant impact of human behavior on climate change and the rising global meat consumption necessitate sustainable food innovations, such as insect burgers, which offer environmental benefits. However, consumption of these insect burgers remains low, largely due to consumer resistance to this innovation. This study examines consumer resistance towards insect burgers and explores the effectiveness of digital nudging strategies, specifically priming and the combination of priming with goal setting, in reducing emotional, behavioral and cognitive resistance, moderated by pro-environmental attitudes. Incorporating evidence from an online experiment with a between-subjects design where 181 adult Dutch respondents were randomly assigned to one of the three conditions (no digital nudge vs digital priming vs digital priming combined with goal setting), this study demonstrates that digital priming, and digital priming combined with goal setting are effective strategies to reduce resistance to a green innovation. Participants exposed to digital priming show significantly lower emotional and cognitive resistance to insect burgers and those exposed to both digital priming and goal setting exhibit significantly reduced emotional, behavioral, and cognitive resistance. Additionally, this study reveals that these digital nudges vary with different levels of pro-environmental attitudes. The findings indicate that digital priming is effective in reducing emotional and cognitive resistance among individuals with weaker to average pro-environmental attitudes. The combination of digital priming with goal setting also successfully reduced emotional resistance within this group. However, the effectiveness of this combined strategy on behavioral and cognitive resistance remained consistent regardless of the level of pro-environmental attitudes. Lastly, this study enhances the understanding of consumer resistance by developing highly reliable scales for its various dimensions.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen