Abstract
Some recent studies have argued that green consumption increases the social status of consumers and thus the desire for social status may serve as one of the motivating forces behind green consumption. Thus, the elevated cost of green products is assumed to be a key condition for green consumption increasing social status.
In this study we test an alternative hypothesis: that the perceived prosociality of green consumption, rather than its costliness, increases the social status of those who consume green products. We conducted a series of three experiments (total N = 1,223) in which we independently manipulated the green profile and the price of products.
Our experiments showed that green consumption increases the social status of consumers independent of the price of green products and that the positive effect on social status is partially mediated by the perceived prosociality of green consumers.