Refuting fear in heuristics and in recycling promotion

Abstract

This paper deals with emotions in order to demonstrate that recycling behavior is associated more with positive emotions than with cognitions. The resulting model displays a marked contrast to the classic cognitive paradigm in the sense that this perspective highlights the idea that consumers act on the basis of their affective reactions, with cognitive factors playing a minor role. In addition, showing alternative routes to achieve both recycling involvement and behavior depending on both the emotional and cognitive characteristics of individuals within the hedonic process.

Introduction

In recent years, researchers stress the significance of emotional response as a central aspect of behavior by highlighting the idea that conduct can be strongly influenced by consumer reactions to promotional campaigns (Solomon, 1997). However, the environmental literature contains very little research into how people can adopt recycling behavior following a non-cognitive antecedent decision, for example, by placing more emphasis on emotional components (Ratneshwar et al., 2003). This is due to the fact that the predominant proposed paradigm to understand environmental conduct assumes that not only is recycling behavior highly cognitive, also displaying a high level of involvement, as explained in both the multi-attribute theory and the theory of reasoned action (Kok, and Siero,, 1985, Emmet,, 1990, Goldenhar, and Connell,, 1993, Taylor, and Todd,, 1995, Kalafatis, et al., 1999). To be more specific, both theories point out not only that the hierarchy of effect is know-feel-do but also that an attitude arises as a result of cognitive processes and is related to affect so that an attribution is then made which leads to a particular attitude towards behavior associated to a product. In this way, an attitude toward recycling is developed through awareness both of how to recycle and of environmental damage since those theories indicate a connection between affect and attitude, with associative learning processes and attribution as linking elements.

However, the classic paradigm is possibly not the only one that is valid to explain ecological and recycling behavior. The researchers base this on the fact that: (1) some works contradict the protocol of classic effects and point out that recycling behavior is not a high involvement conduct (Vining, and Ebreo,, 1990, Díaz,, 2006); (2) much evidence points to the importance of emotions related to the ecological protected creed (Rogers and Prentice-Dunn, 1997) and (3) the knowledge and beliefs approach, aimed at influencing conservation behaviors, has not achieved the expected success in terms of developing the desired behaviors (Kotler and Roberto, 1992). Therefore, one might suppose the existence of other kinds of models, such as emotional or hedonistic learning, that explain recycling conduct. On that basis, the general objective of this research is not only to highlight the importance of recycling behavior as an affective conduct, but also to give more insight into how emotions work in this recycling adoption process.

With the aim of making those academic contributions and providing some practical implications, this work shows the following four sections: (1) a review of the literature; (2) some methodological aspects; (3) an analysis of the results and (4) conclusions.