While a large majority of people express concern about the environment, only a small fraction consistently purchase environmentally sustainable products. What accounts for this attitude-behavior gap, and how can it be overcome? In The Green Bundle, Magali Delmas and David Colgan posit that this gap can be reduced by emphasizing the private benefits of green products while also providing more credible information about the environmental performance of those products. They focus on five core sets of private benefits—health, savings, quality, status, and emotional connectedness—and two aspects of environmental product claims—greenwashing and green signaling. Using a wide range of social science concepts, survey-based and experimental evidence, real world examples, and context-dependent logics, Delmas and Colgan clearly and persuasively make the case that bundling these benefits and claims can and will increase the market share of sustainable products.
Two of the types of private benefits the authors highlight—health and savings—are relatively straightforward and unsurprising, even if producers of green products have struggled with marketing them effectively. There are many empirical connections between ecological and human health—that which is good or harmful for the environment is likely to be good or harmful for one’s body, and vice versa. Delmas and Colgan discuss how information campaigns, public health incidents, starting a family, and facing health problems can increase the salience of these connections. They also show how specific companies have responded to consumer interest in products that are safe for both humans and the environment, such as Brita’s marketing campaign that connects its filtered water with both healthy living and environmental responsibility.
The relationship between saving money and saving the Earth also should be, at least on the surface, relatively self-explanatory. Using less energy, for example, should cost less money and be less environmentally harmful, all other things being equal. This is the basic logic of energy star, a US government program that certifies light bulbs, household appliances, and even houses that significantly reduce energy costs. However, Delmas and Colgan adeptly explain why a simple cost-savings argument is not always an effective pitch for green products. Lack of energy information, incorrect perceptions of energy use and expenses, the limited amount of associated savings, and discounting of future savings all contribute to devaluing this component of the green bundle. The authors suggest several strategies for overcoming these barriers, including emphasizing losses rather than gains (as Washington, DC’s tax on plastic bags does), cutting costs into small pieces (as Sunrun’s solar leasing program does), and embedding environmental attributes in package deals (as Hayward Lumber does with its whole-system building approach).
The trade-offs associated with the other three sets of private benefits—quality, status, and emotional connectedness—are likely to be more widely appreciated. Delmas and Colgan directly engage with these challenges and offer insightful explanations and examples that demonstrate how they can be overcome by smart design and marketing. As the authors point out, green products, from scratchy recycled toilet paper to noisy recyclable packaging, have historically been plagued with a quality perception problem. Delmas and Colgan identify several dimensions of quality that green product designers and marketers can focus on to overcome this perception, and they discuss specific examples of companies that are exceling in these areas. They highlight how Tesla’s cars and many LED lighting products have better performance than their conventional alternatives and how LG has improved the usability of its energy-efficient refrigerators. KB Home’s modular designs aim to be both net-zero energy and add increased functionality for households. Likewise, the authors discuss the durability of Patagonia clothing, the comfort of Essentia products, and the convenience of Uber and Airbnb, all of which have important sustainability attributes as well.
The connection between greenness and social status may also not be intuitive for everyone. Strong environmental concerns and deep commitment to sustainable lifestyles have historically been linked with countercultures associated with “hippies,” “treehuggers,” and radical activists. But as Delmas and Colgan document, going green has become more mainstream in recent decades, and they highlight celebrity endorsement of the Prius as a key turning point in this process. They discuss several other examples that show how specific marketing strategies can use rewards or threats to one’s social status as a means of promoting green products. These include Reformation clothing’s blending of narcissism and altruism, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates’s Giving Pledge with its use of friendly competition and peer pressure, and efforts to reduce electricity and water use by highlighting the performance of others living nearby.
The final component of the green bundle is perhaps the most abstract and overlooked but arguably the most important. It is the emotional connections that consumers feel with products. The authors emphasize the importance of storytelling that engages people’s emotions and helps them feel empathy with the humans and nonhumans that are impacted, either positively or negatively, by the products they buy. The power of this effect is demonstrated by the Certified Humane label, which is associated with being “moral,” “caring,” and “considerate” (130). In a survey conducted by the authors, consumers expressed a higher willingness to pay for this label than the organic label, despite its association with health benefits. Delmas and Colgan encourage firms to activate these emotional connections through photographs (as Lotus Foods does with pictures of farmers), stories (as Dawn has done with its wildlife conservation efforts), direct contributions (as TOMS does through its one-for-one donation program), and even direct experiences (as ecotourism companies do for their guests). The authors emphasize the use of social media, the importance of CEOs leading the way, and the need to do all of these things with “integrity, honesty, and good faith” (149).
This is equally true of efforts to highlight the environmental performance of products, which is also a critical part of the green bundle. Delmas and Colgan dedicate a chapter to the “pitfalls of greenwashing” and lead it off with the infamous case of Volkswagen. Such overt fraud, however, only represents a small fraction of the greenwashing that has been found in the marketplace. They summarize work that has been done on the other sins of greenwashing, the most prevalent of which is the sin of the hidden tradeoff. They also highlight some of the drivers of said greenwashing, which include people’s short-term and optimism biases, the low costs of getting caught, the ethical climates of companies, organizational inertia, and the “short arm of the law” (167). Given these diverse factors, the “long arm of public opinion,” as represented by advocacy organizations, such as Greenpeace, SourceWatch, and many others, is particularly important in keeping firms accountable (170).
These organizations help firms send credible signals to consumers, through efforts that standardize the terms of discussion through reporting standards like the Global Reporting Initiative and certifications like ISO 14001. Delmas and Colgan identify a range of criteria for identifying appropriate product eco-labels and also encourage companies to develop proper incentives for their employees, engage their suppliers, and simplify their messages. They emphasize the importance of not relying too much on technical information, providing context for and visualizing the information they do provide, and translating it into terms that people care about. They argue that firms must be modest and know when to explicitly connect these environmental signals with the other aspects of the green bundle (and when to do so more quietly).
This book has many strengths—it is full of both positive and negative examples that are directly tied to more general design and marketing strategies. It effectively explains and applies important social science concepts, such as bounded rationality, the theory of planned behavior, and cobenefits, and builds on scholarly research—including the authors’ own work—related to these topics. While focused on firm-level decisions and dynamics, it also highlights the importance of advocating for government policies that penalize greenwashing and reward authentically green products.
The primary counterargument to the authors’ thesis is that bundling can distract from the moral arguments for dealing directly with environmental problems. Some research has shown that green behavior driven by intrinsic or “self-transcending” motivations can indeed be “crowded out” by messages that emphasize extrinsic or self-interested values (Frey and Oberholzer-Gee Reference Frey and Oberholzer-Gee.1997; Perino, Panzone, and Swanson Reference Perino, Panzone and Swanson2014; Evans et al. Reference Evans, Maio, Corner, Hodgetts, Ahmed and Hahn2013; Berglund and Matti Reference Berglund and Matti2006). The green bundle approach thus risks reinforcing a preference for private goods at the expense of public goods, particularly when “win-win” options are not present and tradeoffs are required. While Delmas and Colgan acknowledge these issues and assert that they are unlikely to be a problem for most consumers, a deeper engagement with the related literature and more expansive exploration of this potential dynamic would have been helpful.
Overall, however, the book provides an accessible, informed, and actionable discussion of a set of ideas that have the potential to catalyze a significant increase in the uptake of sustainable products. Practitioners, students, and scholars alike should find it to be a useful source of practical insights on consumers and the greening of the modern marketplace.
