The Slippery Slope of Green Consumption: The Nonlinear Effects of Social Class

As environmental issues grow increasingly acute, more research is needed to understand the impact of individuals’ behaviors on sustainability. Given that green consumption can reflect status differentiation (Griskevicius et al. 2010), and social class serves as a dimension of consumer distinctiveness (Grier and Deshpandé 2001), we propose that social class, as a means of consumer differentiation, will influence their propensity for green consumption. Social class is defined as a combination of individuals’ material resources (i.e., income, education, and job status), and self-perceptions of their own rank in the society vis-à-vis others (Kraus et al. 2012). It has profound psychological and cultural effect on individuals’ feelings, thoughts, and behaviors (Grossmann and Huynh 2013). However, scant research has examined how social class shapes consumer behaviors (Shavitt et al. 2016; Yoon and Kim 2018). The present research proposes a nonlinear (i.e., inverted Ushaped) effect of social class on green consumption, such that individuals at the middle position of the class continuum show greater green propensity than those at the lower or upper position (H1). Although striving for a higher social rank is a fundamental motive for individuals, the means for rank advancement differ (Belmi and Laurin 2016). Specifically, lower-class individuals believe that they need to make prosocial contributions to advance their status, and are thus driven by social acceptance for green consumption (H2a). However, as the intrinsic benefits associated with social hierarchy grow exponentially, individuals proximal to the top attach more importance to justifying their advantaged standing using ideological means such as essentialism. Essentialism refers to the belief that social class category is predetermined and immutable, and such ideology helps to justify disparities in social rank (Kraus and Keltner 2013). Thus, we propose that essentialism would demotivate individuals from engaging in green consumption (H2b). Finally, we propose that individuals’ belief in a just world (BJW) moderates the nonlinear effect of social class on green consumption (H3). BJW refers to the belief that the world is a just place where people deserve what they get and get what they deserve (Lerner 1980). We suggest that high BJW promotes individuals’ acquiescence of perceived differences in social class, which attenuates the nonlinear effects of social class difference on green consumption.