Dallas O’Dell, Ganga Shreedhar, Frédéric Basso

Keywords:
Degrowth, sufficiency, reduced consumption, sufficiency-promoting marketing

Abstract:
This research translated two opposing sustainability agendas, degrowth and green growth, into consumption-relevant messages in attempting to influence pro-environmental intentions, beliefs, and behaviours in both market (sustainable bath and beauty products) and non-market (carbon footprint app) contexts.

When marketing a brand in Studies 1 and 2, we find little difference between our two framing conditions – framing to encourage reduced consumption (degrowth) and framing to maintain existing consumption levels (green growth) – on intentions to purchase the product or support the brand. We even see a slight increase in purchase intentions under the reduced consumption message. We question whether the benefits of using marketing to reduce consumption proposed by prior literature, that is brand equity and increasing customer loyalty, are even compatible with the ultimate goal of reducing consumption, let alone suitable for a radical restructuring of society proposed by degrowth.

In Study 3, we examine the non-marketing context of a non-profit app, finding that degrowth framing significantly increased the likelihood of choosing a growth-critical positions on the growth v. environment debate, compared with the green growth framing. However, we find that green growth framing was more persuasive in garnering policy support, both for environmental policies in general, and for degrowth policies specifically. We do not find any effect of framing the app for citizens versus consumers. We discuss a potential pitfall of degrowth’s system-level focus in potentially disengaging individuals and disempowering them to mobilize toward change. We urge degrowth scholars to investigate these perception and mobilization issues further.

This complete work is available upon request.