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The impact of scarce natural resources predictions and policies on consumer behaviour

Mugnier, Chris Calypso Mireille; Besse, Axel Clement Joshua Akira
Master thesis
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URI
http://hdl.handle.net/11250/2625391
Date
2019
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  • Master of Science [1117]
Abstract
Purpose: The main purpose of this study is to evaluate consumers believability

and their behaviour in two situations: first when they are exposed to a natural

resource depletion prediction and secondly when they learn that a future

government policy restricting their access to the resource is due to be

implemented. While previous studies have only considered commodity as

products that are transformed and manufactured such as classical products, luxury

products, no past study examined the commodity as natural resources. This study

also analyses the findings of environmental literature and the limitations of

predictions and policies due to barriers such as psychological distance or emotions

leading to denial for instance. Basically, as there are some discrepancies between

the findings of marketing and green research, our goal is to understand if

consumers would behave according to the scarcity marketing theories and behave

in a competitive and selfish way or if they would not change their behaviour

because of denying processes or a lack of trust.

Academic background:

Overall, the marketing literature states that when a consumer is exposed to a

scarcity context, he is more likely to behave in a selfish and competitive way

(Roux, Goldsmith, & Bonezzi, 2015). On the other side, many environmental

studies highlighted the environmental messages limits: there are many barriers

that would lessen the message effect on the consumer such as collapse porn

(Stoknes, 2014), the psychological distance (Spence, Poortinga, & Pidgeon,

2012)... T’he point is to understand which of these two kinds of behaviours would

eventually get the upper hand.

Methodology scope:

The study has been conducted through a long survey measuring the natural

resources depletion prediction credibility, the consumer’s reaction and changes in

behaviour when facing depletion prediction and policies implementation. This

questionnaire was also structured in four conditions randomly presented aiming at

measuring both the impact of the source between a pro-environmental and proindustry

source and the effect of time as a psychological distance for the

prediction. There has been a total amount of 186 participants to the study and the sample was located in Europe, with most respondents coming from France. After

cleaning the data, there were still 181 participations for the survey, which means

that each of our four conditions consisted in more than 30 participants.

Findings:

Overall people tend to be quite neutral towards water depletion predictions and

tend to believe oil depletion predictions a bit more. When natural resources

depletion predictions’ believability increases, then more sustainable behaviours

are said to be adopted by people, especially when it comes to basic water related

actions (flushing toilets, taking showers or baths, watering the garden).

Feeling an emotion toward a water depletion prediction has a more positive

impact on the prediction’s believability than feeling no emotion at all. When it

comes to feeling an emotion towards an oil depletion prediction, more sustainable

behaviours are adopted by the participants especially when those behaviours are

linked with transportation modes or buying local products.

The influence of time on on people’s believability towards predictions or change

of behaviour in response to policies implementation forecast cannot be depicted.

The source of the prediction also has an influence. Overall, predictions

implementation forecast about oil are more impactful when they come from

NGOs than when they come from industry groups. NGOs predictions increase

people’s believability and make them adopt more sustainable behaviours.

Overall when it comes to policies and behaviours ahead of the policies

implementations, we cannot depict any variable between time, emotion or source

which is statistically significant and could explain the influence of a variable on

the behaviours.

Contribution: This research, unlike prior studies, examines natural resources

depletion predictions and futures policies implementation.

In order to make people adopt more sustainable behaviours, they should first

believe in the natural resource depletion prediction they are facing. We cannot

depict a change of behaviour between the time the people hear about a future

policy implementation and the actual implementation.

Keywords: scarcity; natural resources; consumer behaviour; predictions; policies.
Description
Masteroppgave(MSc) in Master of Science in Business, Marketing - Handelshøyskolen BI, 2019
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Handelshøyskolen BI

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