Businesses often provide reduced services for environmental reasons, such as hotels encouraging guests to reuse towels and bed linens to help protect the environment. This study aims to investigate the effects of the availability of choice, green skepticism, environmental concern and environmental priming on consumer attitudes toward businesses providing reduced services under conditions of both high and low perceived importance of the reduced service.
A conceptual model is presented, and hypotheses are tested with three experimental studies in the USA. Data are analyzed using structural equation modeling analysis.
First, the availability of choice positively affects attitudes in both high and low perceived importance situations, and green skepticism mediates this link in high perceived importance situations. Second, environmental concern moderates the link between the availability of choice and attitude, and this link is mediated by green skepticism, in high perceived importance situations. Third, in high perceived importance situations, environmental-related (vs -unrelated) priming leads to more positive attitudes among consumers high on environmental concern, whereas in low perceived importance situations, environmental priming leads to less positive attitudes, and this effect does not differ across environmental concern levels. Finally, negatively (vs positively) valenced environmental priming is not more effective in influencing attitudes in high perceived importance situations.
Study 1 used a sample of college students instead of general consumers. In addition, the three experiments were conducted only in the USA. As a result, the generalizability of the study’s findings could be improved.
First, providing consumers with a choice between traditional complete service and reduced service is effective in improving attitudes only among customers with low environmental concern. Second, when developing strategies to reduce green skepticism, firms should consider the perceived importance of the reduced service and consumers’ environmental concern levels. Third, environmental priming is a double-edged sword; it is effective (vs counterproductive) in high (vs low) perceived importance situations. Finally, using negatively valenced environmental messages should be avoided.
First, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to examine the impact of choice availability on attitudes and the mediating role of green skepticism. Second, it advances environmental concern research by identifying its multiple moderating effects. Third, it enriches environmental priming research by demonstrating that the effect varies across the perceived importance levels of the reduced service. Finally, it adds to the debate on the effects of priming valence by confirming that negativity bias does not play a role in the high perceived importance of the reduced service contexts.
