Premium
Can normal narcissism be managed to promote green product purchases? Investigating a counterintuitive proposition
Author(s) -
Naderi Iman,
Strutton David
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/jasp.12230
Subject(s) - narcissism , counterintuitive , psychology , visibility , situational ethics , social psychology , perspective (graphical) , product (mathematics) , trait , construct (python library) , value (mathematics) , computer science , epistemology , philosophy , physics , geometry , mathematics , programming language , artificial intelligence , machine learning , optics
Despite the presumed influence of narcissism as a prevalent consumer trait, the psychological construct was only recently linked to consumer theory. “Normal” narcissism is traditionally associated with negative effects on others. But narcissism is examined from a different perspective here. This study investigates how narcissistic traits may influence consumer tendencies to engage in “green” behaviors. Study 1 demonstrates that narcissists do not intrinsically value green behavior or its potential societal benefits. However, four integrated experiments—grounded in costly signaling theory and the realistic accuracy model—demonstrated that situational factors such as product visibility, purchase visibility, relative price, and message detection and utilization could be influential in motivating normal narcissists to act “green.”