Focusing on the forest or the trees: How abstract versus concrete construal level predicts responses to eco-friendly products
By Rebecca Walker Reczek, Remi Trudel, K. White. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2018
149 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Abstract In this research, we propose that, by their very nature, issues linked to environmental sustainability feel psychologically distant to people. Because of this, the mindset that an individual holds can predict reactions to eco-friendly products. Across five experiments, the authors demonstrate that construing information at an abstract (vs. concrete) level is associated with more positive reactions to eco-friendly products. This differential response is driven by the fact that an abstract construal is compatible with a focus on the future. Eco-friendly products can potentially be made somewhat more appealing to individuals with a concrete construal by strategically altering communications about these products to match this construal. We demonstrate that this can be accomplished by presenting detailed, concrete information about the sustainable attributes of the product. We also present results suggesting that explicitly framing communications about eco-friendly products to focus on the present (vs. the future) may accomplish the same goal.
Subfields: Applied Psychology, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law, Social Psychology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7bff38e70797633ff3f4d27fa7814844c4d323f8
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Applied Psychology
- Richard E. Petty
- P. Briñol
- J. Teeny
- Joseph J. Siev
- Zakary L. Tormala
- Derek D. Rucker
- Kenneth G. DeMarree
In Social Psychology
- Richard E. Petty
- P. Briñol
- J. Teeny
- Joseph J. Siev
- Zakary L. Tormala
- Derek D. Rucker
- Bertram Gawronski
- L. Bergkvist
Citations in the corpus
- A Review and Conceptual Framework for Understanding Personalized Matching Effects in Persuasion (2020, background): “Other research has extended it to the type of product being marketed, too (i.e., eco-friendly products are more appealing to consumers in abstract vs. concrete mind-sets, because protecting the environment is a relatively abstract, future-focused initiative; Reczek et al., 2018).”