How effective is green marketing?
An experiment on airline choice
Maud Hesseling 10773967
Master Thesis Persuasive Communication Prof. dr. Edith Smit
Graduate School of Communication University of Amsterdam
Abstract
With climate change being today’s number one topic for debate, consumers’ eyes are on
companies, awaiting what they will do to diminish their environmental impact. Consequently,
companies are seeking ways to effectively communicate their green efforts. This study aimed to
find out more about the effectiveness of green marketing, as a way for companies to do so.
Consumers’ brand attitudes and environmental concerns have been measured to test how they affect
consumer intentions to choose an airline to fly with, as a result of the advertisements they were
exposed to (regular vs. green marketing). Knowledge about the effectiveness of green marketing
and the effects of brand attitude and environmental concerns will help airlines to create effective
marketing campaigns, possibly tailored to the level of environmental concerns of potential
customers. With an experimental design, this study was able to determine causal relations between
the concepts. The results show that being exposed to green marketing leads to a higher intention to
fly with the corresponding airline, as opposed to an airline using regular marketing. This effect
strengthens when a consumer’s level of environmental concerns increases. Furthermore, a higher
brand attitude towards an airline leads to a higher intention to buy a ticket from that airline. These
findings show that airlines will benefit from using green marketing, as opposed to regular
marketing, as that will increase consumers’ intentions to fly with them. Green marketing did not
affect consumers’ brand attitude towards that airline. Therefore, future research could look into
other concepts that may explain the effect of green marketing on consumers’ intention to choose an
airline.
Introduction
In today’s society, it is becoming more and more important for organizations to show the
day-to-day business operations. As individuals and governmental organizations are already publicly
looking into green innovations, it is now up to organizations to follow this trend and commit to the
preservation of our environment. When organizations have reached that point, it is important for
them to communicate their efforts to society. Research has shown that big companies will benefit
from taking their social responsibility, as it will lead to higher customer loyalty (Asatryan, 2013)
and consequently to a higher brand value (Chen & Tseng, 2010).
Throughout the years, companies have increasingly started to market products or services in
a green and environmentally friendly way (Hagmann, Semeijn, & Vellenga, 2015) and it is
nowadays a common way for big companies to communicate their environmental concerns
(Schreiber, 2009). In those kinds of advertisements, green efforts being made by a company can be
promoted in order to increase the business value of the product in question and show the consumer
in what way the company is contributing to environmental preservation. In order for the consumer
to understand the green efforts, the advertisement should entail some technical details on how the
effort exactly diminishes environmental damage. The amount of technical details the advertisement
entails is depending on the level of technical background of the industry. Fruits can be treated with
chemicals to make them grow bigger or look better or can be grown by nature only. A company
involved in selling fruits could therefore simply state that they grew their fruits without adding any
chemicals in the process. A company in a more technical industry, however, like the aviation
industry, would have to explain a lot more technical details about how their services have been
improved in terms of effects on the environment. Green marketing, in the form of an advertisement,
dedicated to those efforts might therefore consist of too many technical details to be understandable
for all consumers.
Therefore, the need for less extensive, but still effective ways of green marketing has
features that trigger consumers' perception of the product or text (Steenis, Van Herpen, Van der
Lans, Ligthart, & van Trijp, 2017). That way, consumers do not have to be bothered with technical
details, but will still be aware that green efforts have been made to make the product or service the
better choice to go for when they want to behave environmentally friendly.
As mentioned before, the aviation industry is one that is suitable for this technique of green
marketing. Not just because it is a technical industry of which many would not understand the
details of green efforts, but also because it is not a very green industry by nature (Hergesell &
Dickinger, 2013). That makes this industry an interesting case when looking into the effectiveness
of green marketing. How can green marketing be of use for companies in an industry that will never
be able to eliminate all of its negative environmental effects? The aviation industry has a high risk
of being accused of so called greenwashing (Mayer, Ryley, & Gillingwater, 2012); a practice in
which organizations communicate efforts about all the good they supposedly do to imply they are
taking their responsibility, whereas it is actually disinformation used to shape the public image
(Laufer, 2003). Being accused hereof could potentially strongly damage the brand image.
Communicating about green efforts must therefore be substantiated by clear explanations. Even
though many airlines are working hard on green innovations, the public concern about the effects of
flying on the environment, the so-called flyers-dilemma (Higham, Cohen, & Cavaliere, 2014), is
rapidly increasing. Clear and understandable, and yet genuine, communication about green efforts
would allow airlines to gain public understanding about the efforts they are making to take their
responsibility and innovate the industry. That may also lead to the willingness of consumers to pay
a premium for buying a green product (Mayer et al., 2012).
At this point, there is only a little amount of research about the effectiveness of green
marketing within the aviation industry, none of which studies green cues specifically. In this
decision-making process and never played a significant role (Hagmann et al., 2015; Mayer et al.,
2012). More information about the effects of green marketing could therefore be valuable for
airlines as it would help them to design effective marketing campaigns. After all, in the end it’s all
about selling tickets. A concept that has been studied in relation to green initiatives, is brand
attitude. Several studies have looked into how being green affects brand attitudes towards the
brands in question. Although most studies looked into slightly different concepts, all of them were
focussed on brands that claim to be green or make green efforts. Results indicate that brand
attitudes are in some way connected to being green. Therefore, the concepts of brand attitude will
be measures as mediating variable for the effect of green marketing on intention
That green initiatives never seemed to affect consumer decision making in the airline
industry may be attributed to the lack of aviation-specific technical knowledge of the vast majority
of consumers. Most communication of aviation companies about their green initiatives turned out to
be too technically profound for consumers to understand. Therefore, consumers were not able to
distinguish between airlines in terms of those green initiatives (Hagmann et al., 2015).
Communicating green initiatives with help of clear and simple green cues could solve this problem.
That way, it could be determined whether the usage of green cues in advertisements do actually play
a role in consumers’ decision-making process when buying airline tickets. Although there is some
research about the effects of green initiatives in the aviation industry available (Mayer et al., 2012;
Hagmann et al., 2015), these specific studies have only paid little attention to the communication of
those efforts and how that can be done in a way that will lead to considerable advantages. The
effectiveness of these green cues in affecting consumers’ decision making will therefore be the
focus of the current research and will be studied with the following research question:
RQ: To what extent does green marketing in the aviation industry influence consumers’ intention to choose an airline and how does brand attitude explain this effect?
In this study, we will first of all conceptualize the concepts of green marketing, intention,
brand attitude and environmental concerns and we will elaborate on how they relate to each other.
Following on that, the methodology of this paper will be introduced and results of analyses will be
reported. After that, we will discuss our findings and provide suggestions for future research.
Literature review
Green marketing
Silk (2006) defines marketing as "what an organization must do to create and exchange
value with customers” (p. vii). When looking at it from a simplified company perspective, this can
be translated into the "job that involves encouraging people to buy a product or
service" (Cambridge Dictionary, 2019). This definition is clear in that its focus is on selling a
product or service. Even though seemingly comparable, the concept of green marketing has another
emphasis. It is less focused on selling a product or service and more on communicating sustainable
efforts. Peattie and Charter (2003) define green marketing as "The holistic management process
responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying the needs of customers and society, in a
profitable and sustainable way" (p. 727). Adding to that, they emphasize that "sustainability is the
keystone of the green marketing philosophy" (p. 728), which shows the clear difference with
regular marketing, having consumer encouragement as its keystone.
For companies engaging in green marketing, the most important aspect is to emphasize the
sustainability of a company's effort. Green attributes must be explained in order to convince
consumers of the value of their product or service. However, companies engaging in green
marketing, especially those in technical industries, are at risk of making their green marketing
genuine efforts. Many consumers are not technically savvy enough to fully understand the technical
details behind green efforts, for instance when they are expressed in terms of CO2 emission, which
is a common way for airlines to express green efforts (Hagmann et al., 2015). To solve this problem,
some companies tend to include extensive texts or go into a lot of details in order to explain their
efforts. Even if someone would be interested in more detailed information about the initiative, one
can only process a certain amount of visual and textual information at the same time. Trying to
process too much visual or textual information or a combination of them would lead to cognitive
overload (Mayer & Moreno, 2003). In that case, the amount of details being processed leaves no
room for the actual message to be made sense off, resulting in confusion.
Not including too much information to avoid cognitive overload is doable for companies in
non-technical industries, like the fruit example mentioned earlier, but may present difficulties for
those in more technical industries, like the airline example. A solution for the latter would be to
make use of green cues to subtly express green efforts in layman's terms without going into
technical details. In other industries, making use of those green cues has already proven to be an
effective way to influence consumers' product choice. Steenis et al. (2017) studied consumer
response to packaging design and the effect of green cues on their product choice. They concluded
that the use of certain graphics and colors on packaging implicitly communicate sustainability,
making consumers’ implicit beliefs about a product more positive in terms of sustainability. For
instance, the use of green graphics on a tomato soup package led to higher levels of perceived
sustainability than the same package without green graphics. The same effect might occur when
using green graphics in an airline's marketing message. The green graphics serve as green cues,
signaling sustainability (Steenis et al., 2017). That way, airlines do not have to go into details about
CO2 emissions, carbon offsetting or other terms they generally incorporate in their green marketing
green efforts and sustainability. The current research will therefore refer to green cues specifically
when mentioning green marketing.
Steenis et al. (2017) state that the use of green cues can promote products that consumers
would otherwise not have preferred over similar ones without green cues, but that they also were at
risk of being perceived as greenwashing, a risk especially high for the aviation industry (Mayer et
al., 2012). As claimed by Laufer (2003), this can indeed be used by companies to imply that they
are being green, even though it is actually misleading information shared to improve their public
image. To avoid this, it would be wise to subtly refer to a source of more extensive information in
the green marketing message, so consumers can look up more detailed information about the green
efforts when they want to know more. This could for instance be provided in the form of an URL
directing to a website with all technical details at the bottom or end of the green marketing message.
Intention
The ultimate goal for commercial companies is to make profit and gain market share in
competitive industries. For airlines, this means that they have to make consumers choose their
airline over others. In the context of this study, it means that they have to find a way to effectively
use green marketing to make consumers choose to fly with their airline. As there is limited research
in this field available (Hagmann et al., 2015; Mayer et al., 2012), it would be valuable for
practitioners and further research to know more about this. We will therefore focus on consumers’
intention to choose a certain airline as a result of being exposed to green marketing.
Hagmann et al. (2015) were one of few that looked into the factors that influence
consumers’ intention to choose an airline to fly with. They found that consumers rate non-green
only play a minor role in consumers’ airline choice, which can be explained by the Theory of
Rational Choice. This theory states that we make choices in order to maximize expected benefits for
that action by weighing all expected benefits and costs for all actions and choosing the action with
the highest net benefit (Homans, 1958). Also, it is widely accepted that preferences used to
calculate this net benefit are self-interested (Friedman, 1953). This would explain why green
attributes only play a minor role. After all, the effects of green initiatives are generally not notable
on a short-term individual level. Another reason why green attributes do not play a big role in
consumers' airline choice is that they cannot always be noted and understood by consumers due to a
lack of technical knowledge, as explained previously (Hagmann et al., 2012). This again
emphasizes the need for clear and understandable green marketing.
Hagmann et al. (2012) found that almost half of their participants would be willing to pay
10% more for their ticket in return for a decrease in carbon offset, which has previously been
proven by others too (Cotte & Trudel, 2009; Kang, Stein, Heo, & Lee, 2012). This shows that
consumers generally have a positive attitude towards green attributes offered by airlines, but that
they do not understand them well enough to act upon or that they just do not perceive them to be a
big enough benefit to take into account when deciding on an airline to fly with.
The current research will look into the effectiveness of clear and understandable green
marketing by determining its effect on consumers' airline choice. This is hypothesized as follows:
H1: Green marketing, as compared to regular marketing, will lead to an increased intention to fly with a green airline.
Brand attitude
Several studies have looked into the relationship between being green and brand attitude and
came to the following conclusions. Jain and Kaur (2004) concluded that companies can make use of
green marketing to get information about consumers’ green attitudes. Although this statement is a
little vague in how the two concepts affect each other, it does imply there is a relation between
them. Hartmann, Apaolaza Ibáñez and Forcada Sainz (2005) found a positive effect of green brand
positioning on brand attitude. Of course, green brand positioning is a slightly different concept than
green marketing. However, they both indicate that the company is putting effort in showing how
green they are. The same goes for the study of Olsen, Slotegraaf and Chandukala (2014) for which
they looked into green product introduction and found that introducing green products can improve consumers' brand attitude. Again, not the same concept, but another act that shows the company is being or becoming more green, as is the same for companies using green marketing. Olsen et al. (2014) found that the effect was moderated by the type of product being introduced. Because the aviation industry is not a very green industry by nature (Becken, 2007; Stern, 2007), one could expect that brand attitudes towards airlines will not be affected as much as brand attitudes towards companies in other industries. However, Hagmann et al. (2015) looked into brand attitudes within
the aviation industry and found a positive relation between an airline’s perceived green image and
people’s attitudes towards that airline, so it can be assumed that airlines could benefit from being
green in terms of brand attitude to some extent.
Based on this summary of positive effects of green concepts on brand attitude (Jain & Kaur,
2004; Hartmann et al., 2015; Olsen et al., 2014) and the aviation industry specific positive relation
between green image and brand attitude (Hagmann et al., 2015), we expect a positive effect of
green marketing on brand attitude in the aviation industry. The current study will test this expected
Consequently, we expect brand attitude to affect consumers' intention to choose a certain
airline, depending on the kind of marketing being used by that airline. Brand attitude is assumed to
positively affect consumers' brand choice, in this case; an airline. That is, as brand attitude and
purchase intention have been found to correlate in such a way that a better attitude towards a brand
leads to a higher purchase intention (Spears & Singh, 2004). Also, more positive brand attitudes
will lead to a higher brand equity which will lead to a significantly higher purchase intention
compared to brands with a lower brand attitude and thus lower brand equity (Faircloth, Capella, &
Alford, 2001; Cobb-Walgren, Ruble, & Donthu, 1995). Therefore, aviation industry specific, we
expect brand attitude to positively affect consumers' intentions to choose a certain airline. The
previously mentioned expectations have been hypothesized as follows:
H2: Green marketing will positively influence consumers’ brand attitude (H2a), which will increase their intention to fly with a green airline (H2b).
Environmental concerns
The effects of green marketing on airline choice, as previously mentioned, may be strongly
affected in certain cases. That is, when someone does not have any concerns about the environment,
he or she will not likely be very sensitive to green marketing or any efforts made by airlines to
diminish environmental damage. As explained by the Theory of Rational Choice and other literature
building on it, we make choices to maximize self-interested benefits (Homans, 1958; Friedman,
1953). When one has no environmental concerns, green attributes will not be taken into account
while making choices as they do not contribute to one's self-interested benefits. The same idea can
be applied to people that do have concerns about the environment. They are likely to value green
In other industries, we have already experienced that consumers’ purchasing behaviors are
affected by their environmental concerns (Bovea & Vidal, 2004; Pickett-Baker & Ozaki, 2008). We
expect the same for the aviation industry. By putting emphasis on green attributes through the use of
green marketing, people that are environmentally concerned may see the sustainable efforts being
made by certain airlines, which could affect their brand attitude towards those airline and their
intention to buy a ticket from them. Using green attributes is likely to affect the decision making of
this group more than that of the group that does not have environmental concerns. Therefore, green
marketing is expected to have a bigger effect on people's intention to fly with a green airline when
they do have environmental concerns as opposed to when they do not have environmental concerns,
making environmental concerns a moderating variable. The same goes for the effect of green
marketing on brand attitude, because sustainable efforts from airlines will likely be more valued by
people with environmental concerns than by people without environmental concerns. Furthermore,
the effect of brand attitude on intention is also expected to be affected by people’s environmental
concerns. This expectation is explained by the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1985). This
theory states that one of three factors that determine behavioral intention is the attitude towards that
behavior (Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). In the aviation industry, this would be the attitude towards
flying in general. That may very well be related to attitudes towards an airline, as providing flights
is the core business of airlines. The expected moderating effects of environmental concerns will be
tested by the following hypotheses:
H3a: The positive effect of green marketing on consumers' intention to fly with a green airline is stronger for consumers with high environmental concerns, as opposed to consumers with lower environmental concerns.
H3b: The positive effect of green marketing on consumers' brand attitude is stronger for consumers with high environmental concerns, as opposed to consumers with lower environmental concerns.
H3c: The positive effect of brand attitude on consumers' intention to choose a certain airline is stronger for consumers with high brand attitudes, as opposed to consumers with lower brand attitudes.
Figure 1. Conceptual model.
Method
Research strategy
The current research aimed to test the effects of green marketing. Existing research about
green marketing and its effects on consumers has been limited to survey design and content
analyses and has therefore never been able to determine causal relations. That would be very
valuable knowledge for ‘green’ airlines as it provides them with insights about how to promote their
green efforts in an effective marketing campaign. This study has therefore used an online H2b H2a Brand attitude Intention Green marketing H3b H3a H1 Environmental concerns H3c
experiment, as that allowed us to test for causal relations. Also, with an online experiment the
independent variable could be manipulated while at the same time controlling for any confounding
variables, which is important to assure internal validity (Gravetter & Forzano, 2012).
Research design
We have used a one-factorial experimental between-subjects design with a mediator and a
moderator. ‘Marketing’ (regular versus green marketing) is the independent variable, ‘brand
attitude’ the mediator and 'environmental concerns' the moderator. The dependent variable is
‘intention’. Participants were randomly divided over two conditions (regular or green marketing), in
order to assure external validity (Hox et al., 2009). Because we chose to go with a between subjects
design, we could make sure that none of the participants could be affected by the stimulus material
of the other condition, as that could have influenced their reaction, deteriorating the strength of
results (Hox, De Goede, & Boeije, 2009). It is expected that green marketing will positively
influence brand attitude and that brand attitude consequently will positively influence intention.
Environmental concerns has been measured as a moderating variable affecting the effects of
marketing on brand attitude and brand attitude on intention. We assume that a higher level of
environmental concerns will lead to a stronger effect of marketing on brand attitude, marketing on
intention and brand attitude on intention, as opposed to a lower level of environmental concerns.
Sample
In the current study we have used the method of convenience sampling to gather participants
for the online experiment. Participants have either been contacted via social media, mostly
face-to-face. In addition to that, the snowball method was used as well. Friends and family members have
been asked to spread the link to the experiment, in order to maximize its reach and to be able to
diversify the sample as much as possible in terms of gender, age, educational level and income.
They were sent a link directing them to the online experiment or they were handed a device on
which they could participate on the spot.
Of all 154 participants that took part in the experiment, 28 did not fully finish it. Because
several important variables were measured in the last part of the experiment, those who did not
answer all of the questions were excluded from the analysis. Furthermore, we asked a control
question to check wether participants had been paying attention to the stimulus material and so to
assure that there answers were based on it. The question was: “Have you noted any remarks about
environmentally friendly aspects of the airlines in the advertisement?”. Participants in the regular marketing condition were expected to answer with “No” and participants in the green marketing
condition to answer with “Yes”. As it turned out, the question was not phrased in the right way or
was unclear for any other reason, because a lot of participants’ answers were not in line with
expectations (n = 43). Gravetter and Forzano (2012) claim that it is best to exclude participants that wrongly answer the control question, in order to assure internal validity. However, a Chi2-test revealed
that there was a significant relationship between marketing and the control question. Participants in
the green marketing condition were more likely to have noticed remarks about environmental
friendly aspects than participants in the regular marketing condition, X2 (2, N = 126) = 28.84, p <
.01. Therefore, no data had to be excluded from analysis. After cleaning the data, we were left with
Procedure
After clicking on the link to the online experiment, participants were shown a factsheet. This
contained a cover story in which was mentioned that the experiment was conducted in order to gain
knowledge about the design of commercial advertisements. Also, it explained how and to whom
possible complains about the experiment could be filed, contained contact information of the
researcher and noted participants they had to be at least 18 years old to participate, which was due
to ethical accountability. After the factsheet, participants were shown an informed consent with
some additional information about the procedure. They had to accept this informed consent in order
to continue with the experiment. Also, they were noted that participation was voluntary and that
they could withdraw their participation at any moment, without consequences.
All participants were randomly appointed to either of two conditions; green marketing or
regular marketing. They were asked to imagine themselves seeing the advertisements in a public
area. After they had looked at the advertisements for at least twenty seconds, they could continue to
answer several questions about it.
The questions were about their attitude towards the brands and about their intention to buy a ticket from either of the airlines in the advertisements. To have as much time as possible between
the question measuring participants’ intention to buy a ticket from one of the airlines and the
question about their environmental concerns, we measured demographics and possible confounding
variables between these two. That way, we intended to distract participants, in the green marketing
condition especially, from the fact that they had to choose between a green and a non-green
advertised brand. That is, as we did not want this to be of influence on the extent to which they
judged themselves to be environmentally concerned.
expected that the airline from the green marketing advertisement would be considered more green
than the airlines from the regular marketing advertisements. They were then also asked a control
question about the condition they were in, to see whether they had paid enough attention to the
stimulus material.
Stimulus material construction
In both conditions, participants got to see two fictive airline advertisements. In the regular
marketing condition, they saw advertisements for one cheap and one expensive airline: Easy
Airways and Comfort Airways, respectively. In the green marketing condition, they saw the same
advertisement for the cheap airline. The more expensive airline advertisement, however, differed
from the one in the regular marketing condition. The ticket price was kept the same, but the airline
had another name and another focus to it. It was called Green Airways and the advertisement
emphasized the green aspects of the airline.
The advertisements all showed a plane wing in the evening sun, with the city of Barcelona
on the background. The advertisement for Easy Airways said: “Quick and easy to the Spanish
coast? Fly with Easy Airways and enjoy an amazing city trip!”. Its emphasis was on being quick and easy and to stress this even more, it also said that flying with Easy Airlines meant to make a
conscious choice for the highest convenience. This was, however, accompanied by a disclaimer on
the bottom of the advertisement, directing consumers to a website with more information. The cost
of a round trip ticket to Barcelona, as shown in the advertisement, was 115,- (see appendix A). The
advertisement for the more expensive airline; Comfort Airways, was similar in its imagery, but
textually slightly different. There, the emphasis was on being quick and comfortable (see appendix
with a disclaimer. The price for a round trip ticket to Barcelona for this airline was 145,-. The green
airline; Green Airways, lay its emphasis in the advertisement on the green aspects, saying
“Environmentally conscious and sustainable to the Spanish coast? Fly with Green Airways and
enjoy a green city trip!”. To stress the green aspects, it mentioned that flying with Green Airways meant consciously choosing for the environment, disclaimer included. The price for a round trip
ticket to Barcelona for this airline was 145,- too (see appendix C). All advertisements displayed the
airlines’ logo in the top left corner. For Green Airways, the logo was green, which worked as a
visual green cue.
We have chosen Barcelona as destination of the city trip, as this was found to be number
four in the list of favorite European places for a city trip (Valls, Sureda, &Valls-Tuñonm 2014).
Number one to three were Paris, London and Berlin. Because these are all relatively quick and easy
to reach by train from The Netherlands, they were not considered to be suitable for this study.
To test whether Green Airways was perceived to be more green than the other two airlines,
we conducted a pre-test. This was done by a small online experiment (N = 17) with a within
subjects design. Participants were all shown the three different airline advertisements and asked to
what extend they perceived the advertised brands to be environmentally friendly. This could be
indicated on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from from 1 (not at all) to 7 (very much). Conducting
several paired-sample t-test showed that Green Airways (M = 4.29, SD = 1.61) was perceived to be
significantly more green than Easy Airways (M = 2.00, SD = 0.94), t(16) = -6.74, p < .001, 95% CI
[-3.02; -1.57], and Comfort Airways (M = 2.18, SD = 1.02), t(16) = -6.63, p < .001, 95% CI [-2.80;
-1.44]. This also showed that Easy Airways and Comfort Airways were not perceived to differ in
terms of how green they were. Based on these results, we could safely include the created stimulus
Measuring instrument
Brand attitude
Brand attitudes are defined as a consumer’s set of overall evaluations of a brand (Wilkie
1986) and it has been widely accepted that brand attitudes are a function of associated attributes and
benefits of a specific brand (Keller, 1993). To asses participants' attitudes towards the brands in this
study, the scale of Spears and Singh (2004) has been used. They have critically evaluated existing
brand attitude scales and came to a new scale of which they were confident it would facilitate
adequate comparison of findings across studies. It has proved to be a reliable scale with a
Cronbach's Alpha of .95. The scale consisted of five items: unappealing/appealing, bad/good,
unpleasant/pleasant, unfavorable/favorable and unlikable/likable. All items have been measured on a 7-point Likert scale.
To test whether the items would form a reliable scale in the current research, we performed
principle component analyses and a factor analyses for each of the airlines. For all airlines, the
items showed to have a high enough inter-item correlation to form components with Eigen values
higher than 1. Also, reliability analyses revealed that for all airlines, the five items together formed
reliable scales, so an index variables was created for each of them. See table 1 and 2 for a summary
of results.
Table 1: Results of Principle Component Analysis.
Eigen value R2
PCA Easy Airways 3.74 .75
Comfort Airways 3.60 .72
Table 2: Results of reliability analysis.
To eventually have one scale variable to work with in our analysis, we subtracted the values
from either of the cheap airlines from that of the expensive, green airline. This scale could range
from -6 to 6. Then, in order to simplify interpretations of our analysis, 7 point were added to all
brand attitude values. That resulted in solely positive values that could range from 1 to 13. The final
brand attitudes values ranged from 4.20 to 10.60 (M = 7.10, SD = 1.01).
Intention to choose an airline
Intention to choose an airline is defined as consumers’ intention to buy a ticket from a more
expensive airline. That is, because this study is aimed at finding a difference between airline
advertisements containing green cues versus airline advertisements that do not, participants have to
be shown two different airlines in order to make a choice between them. As airlines offering special
advantages like extra comfort or a greener flight are generally more expensive than airline that do
not, the comparison in this study is made between a cheap airline and a more expensive airline that
offers either a more comfortable flight or a more green flight.
Their intention to choose any of the airlines they have seen is therefore at least partially
based on their judgements of the other airline. To see what airline they would choose to fly with
after being exposed to the advertisements in the regular marketing condition, participants have been
asked to indicate the extent to which they agree with the following statement from 1 (I don’t agree Cronbach’s Alpha
Reliability analysis Easy Airways .91
Comfort Airways .90
at all) to 7 (I fully agree): “Despite of the price difference between both airlines, I still intend to buy a ticket from Comfort Airways”. For participants in the green marketing condition, the statement was: “Despite of the price difference between both airlines, I still intend to buy a ticket from Green
Airways”.
Environmental concerns
In the pre-test, we tested what items would together form the most reliable index variable to
measure environmental concerns with. Participants were given eleven statements about
environmental behavior and were asked to indicate the extent to which they agreed with them, on a
7-point Likert scale ranging from from 1 (I don’t agree at all) to 7 (I very much agree). Four of the
statements were negatively formulated, indicating that when someone highly agreed with those
statements, he or she would have low environmental concerns. These statements were recoded so
they all were formulated positively. A principal-component analyses was conducted, which showed
that the eleven items loaded on four different components with an eigen value higher than 1. The
strongest component had an eigen value of 4.34 and had seven items loading on it. A reliability
analyses revealed that this component had a strong Cronbach’s Alpha of .88, which could not be
improved by adding or deleting any of the items. Therefore, we could use those seven items to
measure participants’ environmental concerns in our main study. These were: “I would donate
money to a good cause concerned with the preservation of our environment”, “I am worried about the future of our planet”, “I try to live a sustainable lifestyle”, “I don’t want my standing charges to raise as a result of pro-environmental policies”, “If I would have the possibility to help recover the environment, I would do it, even though it may be a lot of work”, “I worry about how our society deals with the environment” and “I am willing to sacrifice things in order to live a more sustainable
lifestyle, even though I am not directly affect by it”. All questions were to be answered on 7-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (I don’t agree at all) to 7 (I very much agree).
To check whether the inter-items correlation of the items used in the main study was high
enough to form a reliable scale, we performed a principle component analysis. This showed that
based on the seven items, two components with an eigen value higher than one could be formed
(EVcomponent1 = 3.04, R2component1 = .43; EVcomponent2 = 1.04, R2component2 = .15). However, a reliability
analysis showed that the Cronbach’s Alpha of that component (⍺ = .77) could be improved to .78 by
deleting 1 item. A new principal component analysis revealed that after doing that, there was only
one item with an eigen value higher than 1 (EV = 2.89, R2 = .48). Therefore, the 6 left items
together (⍺ = .78) formed the a new index variable; ‘environmental concerns’.
Table 3: Means and standard deviations.
Manipulation check
To test whether the manipulation of the advertisements in the stimulus material has worked,
a manipulation check was conducted. This would show if participants noticed a difference in the
usage of green cues between the two advertisements they viewed. Participants were asked to
indicate to what extend they agreed with the statement: “One of the airlines from the advertisements
was more environmentally friendly than the other”, on a 7-point Likert scale. An independent sample t-test revealed that participants in the green marketing condition had noticed a significantly
bigger difference between the two advertisements (M = 4.36, SD = 1.84) than participants in the
Mean SD
Brand Attitude 7.10 1.01
Intention 3.47 1.97
This shows that, as intended, Easy Airways and Comfort Airways, shown to those in the regular
marketing group, were not significantly different in terms of how green they were perceived to be,
whereas Easy Airways and Green Airways, shown to those in the green marketing group, were
significantly different in terms of how green they were perceived to be. Based on that we can
conclude that the manipulation of the stimulus material was successful. Green Airways was
perceived to be more green than the other airlines. The results can therefore be interpreted based on
this manipulation.
Confounding variables
Additionally, several other variables have been measured in order to test for confounding
effects. Participants were asked to indicate their monthly income. This was measured with a
multiple choice question with average incomes grouped per thousand euros, with the last group
being “more than 5000,-”. If participants did not want to share their income, they could choose “I
don’t want to share”. People with low incomes may be expected to go for the cheaper ticket, even if compared to a ‘green’ ticket, simply because they cannot afford a more expensive ticket. That way,
income can possible influence the results.
Furthermore, participants were asked to indicate how many times they fly for business
purposes, as opposed to personal trips. In such a situation, one’s company often purchases the
airline ticket, leaving the employee no choice on what airline to fly with. Also, it could be possible
that the employees does buy his or her own ticket, but is bound to a certain airline with which the
company has a contract with. This possible confounding variable was measured by asking
participants to either agree or disagree with the following statement: “When I take a plane, most of
The last question to check for possible confounding effects was about the number of times per year one usually takes a plane. When someone flies only once a year, he or she may be less
likely to be affected by environmental concerns than someone who flies several times a year. This
was measured by asking participants for the average number of times they take a plane per year.
Answering options ranged from “once” to “five times or more” and also included the option
“never”.
Demographics
Demographical data was obtained in order to gather more information about the participants
and to test for possible confounding effects. Also, this data could be useful to explain possible
results or, on the contrary, rule out demographics as possible cause thereof. Participants were asked
for their age and level of education. Also, they were asked to fill in their gender. Besides ‘man’ or
‘woman’, participants could also choose the option of ‘other’.
Plan of analysis
All obtained data were thoroughly cleaned before analyses. Incomplete cases were deleted from the dataset and if needed, items were recoded so they were all positively formulated. After this, factor and reliability analyses were performed after which single items measuring the same variable were merged into index variables. Means and standard deviations were obtained to check for curiosities, but no outliers were found. Also, the skewness and kurtosis from all variables were checked, but none of them showed values indicating skewed data (see table 4).
Table 4: Skewness and kurtosis.
A basic understanding of the cleaned data was obtained with the help of a correlation matrix including marketing, brand attitude, intention and environmental concerns (see table 6).
Hypotheses 1 and 2b will be tested with simple t-tests, after which hypothesis 2b will be tested with a linear regression analysis. Then the mediation model (H2) will be tested using several extra linear regressions and a multiple regression analysis. The entire model, with the inclusion of the moderator (H3), will then as a whole be tested using a conditional process modeling test as provided by Hayes (2013).
Results
Randomization
To test whether participants were randomly divided over both conditions, we performed
several tests to see if both groups were equal in terms of participants’ age, gender and income level.
First, gender was tested to determine general demographic randomization by performing a Chi2-test.
This test showed that men and women were equally divided over conditions, χ²(1, N = 126) = 0.40,
p = .529. Next, we tested for randomization of age by performing an independent sample t-test. This showed that participants, in terms of their age, were equally divided over the regular marketing
group (M = 46.29, SD = 17.16) and the green marketing group (M = 41.87, SD = 15.92), t(124) =
1.50, p = .137, 95% CI [-1.42; 10.27]. Participants’ income level was tested on randomization too,
because we expected income level to possibly affect participants’ intention to choose an airline.
Skewness Kurtosis
Statistic Std. Error Statistic Std. Error
Brand attitude 0.08 0.22 1.96 0.43
Intention 0.30 0.22 -1.10 0.43
Environmental concerns
Participants with a very low income level might prefer to buy a ticket from Green Airways due to
its perceived green character, but may simply not be able to afford its slightly more expensive ticket
price. To control for a confounding effect, we therefore want to make sure the variable income level
is equally divided over both conditions. To test this, we performed another Chi2-test, which showed
that participants were equally divided over conditions in terms of their income level, χ²(6, N = 126)
= 2.50, p = .869. Based on these results, we could assume that participants were equally divided
over conditions.
Testing direct effects
To test H1, we conducted an independent sample t-test with marketing as independent
variable and intention as dependent variable. Due to a non-significant Levene’s test (F = .08, p =
.775), we could assume equal variances in the two conditions. The t-test showed that marketing had
a significant effect on intention t(124) = -3.64, p < 0.001, 95% CI [-1.89; -0.56]. The effect had a
Cohen’s d of .65, meaning that the effect is moderately strong to strong. As confirmed by this test,
people in the green marketing condition had a higher intention to fly with the expensive airline (M
= 4.10, SD = 1.91), than people in the regular marketing condition (M = 2.88, SD = 1.86). This
confirms H1.
H2a was also tested with an independent sample t-test. In this test, marketing again formed
the independent variable and brand attitude formed the dependent variable. We could assume equal
variances over conditions as the Levene’s test was non-significant (F = .00, p = .980). However, the
t-test turned out to be non-significant t(124) = -1.22, p = .226, 95% CI [-0.58; 0.14]. This indicated
that there is no direct effect of marketing on brand attitude, so H2a is rejected.
To test H2b, we performed a linear regression analysis where brand attitude was included as
brand attitude (R2 = .25). This shows a significant positive effect of brand attitude on intention, β =
.50, SE = .15, t = 6.38, p < 0.001, 95% CI [0.67; 1.27], indicating that people with a higher brand
attitude have a higher intention to fly with the more expensive airline and thus accepting H2b.
Table 5: Results independent sample t-tests.
** Effect is significant at the .01 level (2-tailed).
Table 6: Correlation matrix.
** Correlation is significant at the .01 level (2-tailed). * Correlation is significant at the .05 level (2-tailed).
Marketing N Mean St. Dev. t Sig.
(2-tailed) Conf. int. Lower Conf. int. Higher Brand Attitude Regular 65 0.00 0.98 1.217 .226 -0.14 0.58 Green 61 -0.22 1.04 Intention Regular 65 2.88 1.86 -3.64** .000 -1.89 -0.56 Green 61 4.10 1.91 Marketing Brand Attitude Intention Environmental Concerns Marketing Pearson Correlation 1 .109 .310** .004 Sig. (2-tailed) .226 .000 .960 N 126 126 126 126 Brand Attitude Pearson Correlation .109 1 .497** .225* Sig. (2-tailed) .226 .000 .011 N 126 126 126 126 Intention Pearson Correlation .310** .497** 1 .022 Sig. (2-tailed) .000 .000 .805 N 126 126 126 126 Environmental Concerns Pearson Correlation .004 .225* .022 1 Sig. (2-tailed) .960 .011 .805 N 126 126 126 126
Testing mediation effect
To test our mediation model, we first performed two additional linear regression analyses.
One with marketing as independent variable and intention as dependent variable and one with again
marketing as independent variable, but with brand attitude as dependent variable. To eventually test
our full mediation model, we also need the results of the linear regression we performed for the
effect of brand attitude on intention.
The first linear regression tests the effect of marketing on intention. This showed to be
significant F(1, 124) = 113.22, p < .001. The variance in intention was only for 10% explained by
marketing (R2 = .10). There is a significant effect of condition on intention, β = .31, SE = 0.34, t =
3.64, p < .001, 95% CI [0.56; 1.89]. This shows that people in the green marketing condition had a
significantly higher intention to fly with the expensive airline, as opposed to the cheaper airline,
than people in the regular marketing condition.
Then we performed another linear regression analyses, with marketing as independent
variable and brand attitude as dependent variable. As was to be expected considering the
non-significant results of our t-test for the same effect, this regression analyses also turned out to be
non-significant. This again indicated that the kind of marketing used does not affect participants’
brand attitudes towards the brands.
Figure 2: Standardized regression coefficients.
To test the mediation model, we performed a multivariate regression analyses. In this
analysis, marketing and brand attitudes were our independent variables and intention was our
dependent variable. This allowed us to test whether the direct effect of marketing on intention
would change if we controlled for the effect of brand attitude.
The analysis showed a significant result, F(2, 123) = 28.09, p < .001 and the variance in
intention could for 31% be explained by our multivariate regression model (R2 = .31). The effect of
marketing on intention still showed to be significant, β = .26, SE = 0.30, t = 3.45, p = .001, 95% CI
[0.44; 1.61], as it already was when we did not control for the influence of brand attitude t = 3.64, p
< .001. Based on that, we can conclude that the effect of marketing on intention is not mediated by
brand attitude, thus rejecting H2.
Testing moderation effect
We used Hayes’ (2013) PROCESS macro to determine whether our predicted moderation
effects are significant. The test was conducted with marketing as independent variable, intention as
dependent variable, brand attitude as mediator and environmental concerns as moderator. The
results first of all showed that the entire model significantly predicted our results, F(5, 120) = 12.82
p < .001, R2 = .35, so we could safely base our conclusion upon it.
Looking at the interaction effects (H3), the first effect to analyze is the interaction between
marketing and environmental concerns and their combined effect on intention. This shows to be
significant, B = 0.62, SE = 0.31, t = 1.99, p = .049, 95% CI [0.00; 1.23]. We can state that
environmental concerns moderates the effect of the type of marketing on people’s intention to fly
with an airline. More precisely, the higher people’s environmental concerns, the stronger the effect
of marketing on intention becomes (see table 7). Results show that when environmental concern
rises, the interaction effect appears. This means that there is a minimum value of environmental
concerns in order for the interaction effect between marketing and environmental concerns to
appear. People in the green marketing condition showed to have a stronger intention to fly with the
more expensive airline. This intention will become even stronger when they have high
environmental concerns, as opposed to the intention of people in the same condition, but with lower
levels of environmental concerns. The same goes for people in the regular marketing condition.
Even though their intention is lower than people in the green marketing condition, it still becomes
stronger when they have higher environmental concerns as opposed to when they would have lower
environmental concerns. We can therefore accept H3a.
Table 7: Strength of interaction effect between marketing and environmental concerns on intention at
different levels of environmental concerns.
** Effect is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
Next, we look at the interaction between marketing and environmental concerns and their
combined effect on brand attitude. This shows not to be significant, meaning that environmental
concerns does not affect the effect of marketing on brand attitude. We therefore reject H3b.
The last predicted moderating effect is that of the interaction between brand attitude and
environmental concerns on intention. The results show that there is no significant effect there,
meaning that the effect of brand attitude on intention is not affected by environmental concerns.
Based on this, we also reject H3c.
Two direct effects had shown to be significant (H1; H2b) when performing separate tests on
them. However these effects, of brand attitude on intention (B = 0.24, SE = .77, t = 0.32, p = .753) Environmental concerns Effect SE t p 4.17 0.46 0.40 1.16 .250 5.00 0.97 0.29 3.32 .001** 6.00 1.59 0.42 3.80 .000**
and marketing on intention (B = -2.10, SE = 1.59, t = -1.33, p = .188), were no longer significant
when the entire model was tested. This indicates that intention is only significantly affected by
marketing and brand attitude when not controlling for the influence of environmental concerns.
Table 8 shows a summary of all hypotheses and which of them where accepted and rejected.
Table 8: Summary of hypotheses.
Conclusion & discussion
The aim of this study was to gain insight in the extend to which green marketing has the
ability to influence consumers’ intentions to fly with a green airlines and how that can be explained
by their attitudes towards those airlines. An online experiment has been conducted to determine
causal relations between the kind of marketing being used and consumers’ brand attitudes and
intentions. Furthermore, consumers’ environmental concerns have been measured as well to
determine their possible moderating effects. Based on this study, several conclusions can be made.
First of all, this study has proven that the usage of green cues in an airline’s advertisement
leads to an increased intention to fly with that airline amongst consumers. That is, even when a Accepted? H1 Green marketing, as compared to regular marketing, will lead to an increased
intention to fly with a green airline.
Yes H2a Green marketing will positively influence consumers’ brand attitude. No H2b Which will increase their intention to fly with a green airline. Yes H2 Green marketing will positively influence consumers’ brand attitude (H2a), which
will increase their intention to fly with a green airline (H2b).
No H3a The positive effect of green marketing on consumers' intention to fly with a green
airline is stronger for consumers with high environmental concerns, as opposed to consumers with lower environmental concerns.
Yes
H3b The positive effect of green marketing on consumers' brand attitude is stronger for consumers with high environmental concerns, as opposed to consumers with lower environmental concerns.
No
H3c The positive effect of brand attitude on consumers' intention to choose a certain airline is stronger for consumers with high brand attitudes, as opposed to consumers with lower brand attitudes.
ticket from the allegedly green airline costs more than one from a similar airline which has not
engaged in green marketing. Consumers being exposed to advertisements without green cues will
not have a higher intention to choose a more expensive airline over a similar but cheaper one, even
though it is claiming to have other characteristics to make that extra money worthwhile. This
contradicts findings of Hagmann et al. (2015), which stated that green attributes of airlines play a
significantly smaller role in consumers’ airline choice than non-green attributes. This may indicate
that people are changing their perceptions on climate change and the extend to which they
themselves play a role in this. The traditional idea of the Theory of Rational Choice is that we base
our decisions upon where the highest possible self-interested benefit can obtained (Homans, 1958;
Friedman, 1953). This study has, however, shown that green marketing has the ability to influence consumer decision-making in such a way that it is not solely based on self-interested benefits anymore. The Theory of Rational Choice may therefore have become outdated in certain aspects and may be due for reexamination. The influence of green marketing on consumer decision making can partially be explained by the usage of simple cues in advertisements to signal the company’s sustainable efforts. Where many communicated green efforts have been too complicated to be understood by consumers (Hagmann et al., 2015), green cues have the ability to subtly but effectively communicate green efforts and, as shown, with successful results.
A second conclusion of the current research is that consumers’ attitudes towards an airline affect their intention to buy a ticket from that airline. Even when the ticket price is higher than that of a seemingly similar airline, consumers will still have a higher intention to buy a ticket from the airline towards which they have very positive attitudes, as opposed to the cheaper airline towards which their attitudes are lower. This goes for airlines that market themselves to be green as well as
for airlines that offer other advantages. This shows that it is not enough for an airline to make
brand attitude was however rejected. Therefore, we can not unambiguously state that brand attitude
does effect intention in the context of green marketing. Making definite conclusions about how
exactly brand attitude is related with consumer intention to buy a ticket is therefore beyond the
scope of this study. It does provide an interesting opportunity for future research to look into this
relation. The results do however show that making consumers like your brand is of relevance when
you expect them to pay a premium for certain benefits, as intention does show to be significantly
affected by brand attitude. With this finding, this study is able to further substantiate previous
findings about consumers’ willingness to pay a premium for green products or services (Cotte &
Trudel, 2009; Hagmann et al., 2012; Kang et al., 2012; Mayer et al., 2012).
As already shown, the strength of people's intention to fly with a more expensive airline
increases when people are exposed to advertisements with green cues, as compared to when people
are exposed to a regular airline advertisement. Additionally, starting from the bottom value of 5 for
environmental concerns, the higher the level of environmental concerns, the stronger the direct
effect of green marketing on people’s intention to fly with a more expensive airline becomes.
People who are exposed to a green advertisement and who are highly concerned about the
environment will even have a stronger intention to fly with a green airline, and thus pay a little
more for their ticket, than the people exposed to the same advertisement but who are not highly
concerned about the environment. This proves the existence of an interaction effect between
marketing and environmental concerns on people intention to buy a ticket. For airlines, this means
that the usage of green cues in their advertisement and consequently showing this to people who are
highly concerned about the environmental will lead to the highest intention amongst consumers to
fly with that airline. This finding can, as expected, be based on the Theory of Planned behavior. One
of three factors determining behavioral intention is the attitude towards a certain behavior (Ajzen &
opportunity to perform the behavior: the airlines. That is, as the aviation industry will always have a
negative impact on the environment, those who strongly oppose flying as a way of traveling will
likely also strongly oppose the companies providing the flights.
With all of this study’s findings, we can presume that the usage of green cues in marketing
has favorable effects for airlines. By doing so, consumers will be more inclined to choose their
airline over another airline which has not incorporated green cues in their advertisements. Also,
they can charge more, because consumers have a higher willingness to pay a premium for an airline
with green attributes, as opposed to the one without. Even more beneficial results will be obtained
when airline have the ability to show their green advertisements to consumers with high
environmental concerns, as they will even be more inclined to choose a greener airline and pay a
premium for a greener flight.
Quite strikingly is the disappearance of the direct effects of the usage of green cues and
consumers’ brand attitudes on their intention to fly with the green airline when controlling for the
influence of environmental concerns. This indicates a correlation between environmental concerns,
brand attitude and marketing. However, only environmental concerns and brand attitude have
shown to correlate. Intuitively, one could assume that consumers’ environmental concerns therefore
is more of a predictor of their intention than the kind of marketing being used. However, testing for
a causal relation between them has not provided any significant results, indication that marketing is
still the main predictor of intention. Future research could therefore look into how these variables
correlate and what it is that explains or strengthens the effect of marketing on intention and so the
disappearance of direct effects in this study. Also, other possible variables that may cause the effect
to disappear could be studied in order to get a clearer image of the relation between marketing and
intention and the possible interacting effect of environmental concerns.
marketing on brand attitude. This may indicate that green marketing simply triggers people to be
more green and base decisions upon that trigger, but that brand attitude is not an underlying
mechanism explaining this reaction. There may still be other factors serving as underlying
mechanism explaining this effect, which could be an interesting topic for future research to study.
Even though this study provides some interesting insights into the effects of green
marketing, which can be helpful for marketeers and airlines, it also has some limitations. First of
all, the measuring instrument contained a control question to check whether participants had paid
attention to the stimulus materials. It turned out that 43 participants answered this question
incorrectly, which strongly implies that the questions was unclear for many of them. Because of the
high amount of wrong answers, these participants were not excluded from analyses, as that would
have meant that there would be too few participants left to base conclusions upon.
Furthermore, against expectations, there was no correlation between marketing and brand
attitude. It is possible that brand attitudes are not affected by any kind of marketing because it may
not seem sincere or be perceived as greenwashing (Laufer, 2003). As the brand used in this study
were fictive brands, attitudes about them had to be formed during the experiment. This may have
been too little time for participants to form an attitude about them, resulting in a lot of mediocre
scores on the brand attitude index variable, which may explain insignificant results. The lack of
correlation between marketing and brand attitude could possibly also be explained by the way brand
attitudes were measured. Participants in the green marketing group were not only shown a green
airline but also another airline that would offer another benefit. That is, as only showing a green
airline may have resulted in social desirability bias. For this reason, presenting participants with two
airline with different advantages would provide participants with a reason to report less favorable
attitudes towards the green airline. A choice for the non-green (cheaper) airline could then for
