Doing Good Better: Impure Altruism in Green Apparel Advertising

Abstract

In this study, we identify impure altruism as a duality of altruistic and egoistic warmth. We examine how these feelings motivate consumers to buy green apparel in response to advertisements. We test the effectiveness of the message orientation and its interactivity with a beneficiary and propose modeling impure altruism as the reason why consumers purchase green apparel. The study uses a quasi-experiment to estimate a comparison effect among advertising stimuli. We conduct an online survey among US consumers that garnered 586 responses for the main data analysis. The results indicate that egocentric appeals increase perceived uniqueness and that human beneficiary appeals lead to higher communal harmony. The findings show that communal harmony and global wellbeing prompt altruistic warmth and that uniqueness and product quality encourage egoistic warmth. Notably, altruistic warmth contributes to egoistic warmth, which indicates the existence of impurely altruistic consumers. Both altruistic and egoistic warmth lead to the intention of purchasing green apparel. We recommend "feel-good" marketing strategies to publicize the benefits of a sustainable lifestyle. The study contributes to the theoretical development of sustainability and can serve as an extension of a discrete model of altruism and egoism on consumers' sustainable behavior.

50 Shades of Green: Insights into Personal Values and Worldviews as Drivers of Green Purchasing Intention, Behaviour, and Experience

“…Part of our respondents may have endorsed pure egoistic values, which are expected to negatively relate to pro-environmental consumption patterns. Another part of our respondents may have felt self-conscious and proud of being associated with a green imago [30]. However, another part may have associated green products with health benefits, and their egoistic value orientations may have been positively associated with their sustainable consumption pattern.…”

“…With respect to Hypothesis 1a-c, we found that the expected negative relationship between egoistic value orientations and green consumer patterns was not confirmed by our data. This finding may be the consequence of the fact that egoism encompasses feelings of pride and self-respect, which are derived from self-interest [30]. Previous research has found that self-conscious and egoistic feelings are positively related to prosocial behaviours because acting pro-socially makes egoistic individuals feel proud of themselves [61].…”

“…Other studies have aggregated all value orientations into one category (e.g., [19]), which again limits the possibility to draw conclusions about separate value orientations. However, other studies have explored the influence of values on intentions (e.g., [29,30]) rather than actual behaviours. Despite addressing different values within one study, the focus is on consumer intentions instead of actual behaviour.…”

“…Altruism refers to the degree to which individuals are concerned for the welfare of others [18,30,35]. When individuals are driven by altruistic values, they feel an emphatic concern for others without pursuing personal benefit [30]. This motivates them to take into account the impact of their actions on other people when deciding on behaving in a pro-environmental way or not [20].…”

Using Social Media Mining and PLS-SEM to Examine the Causal Relationship between Public Environmental Concerns and Adaptation Strategies

“…The seriousness of environmental problems may not reach a sufficiently malignant level to activate self-interest. Song and Kim [ 98 ] also proposed that the public may have dual motives of benefitting others and themselves when they have an awareness of the harmful environmental consequences, then feel egoistic and altruistic concerns jointly, correspondingly. In our research, people in Taiwan have a strong perception that air pollution is the most serious of all environmental problems, with negative consequences for their own and others’ health and safety.…”