Jin Jia, Dou Xiaodong, Meng Liang, Yu Haihong
Business School, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
Academy of Neuroeconomics and Neuromanagement, Ningbo University, Ningbo, China.
Front Hum Neurosci. 2018 Oct 12;12:417. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2018.00417. eCollection 2018.
Nowadays, the international community is becoming increasingly concerned about the sustainable utilization of natural resources. In order to protect the environment and reward sustainable practices, eco-labeling that signifies the environmental friendliness of the labeled food is already widely promoted in many regions around the world. Thus, it is of great importance for researchers to study consumers' attitudes toward eco-labeled food as food is supposed to satisfy consumers' needs. This study employed the event-related potentials (ERPs) approach to investigate consumers' attitudes toward eco-labeled food by comparing their neural processing of visual stimuli depicting eco-labeled and non-labeled food. Our results showed that behaviorally, participants preferred to buy eco-labeled food rather than non-labeled one. At the neural level, we observed markedly smaller P2 and N2 amplitudes when pictures of eco-labeled food were presented. Furthermore, we also found that amplitudes of P2 were negatively correlated with participants' purchase intention. Therefore, our current findings suggest that, while the environmental-friendly eco-labeling was not to one's own interests, it might still be evocative, which induce consumers' positive emotion, bring less cognitive conflict to the purchase decision-making and then result in a greater purchasing intention. This effect might be the result of the delivered value of social desirability.
如今，国际社会越来越关注自然资源的可持续利用。为了保护环境并奖励可持续行为，表明贴有标签食品环境友好性的生态标签已在世界许多地区广泛推广。因此，由于食品应满足消费者需求，研究人员研究消费者对生态标签食品的态度具有重要意义。本研究采用事件相关电位（ERP）方法，通过比较消费者对描绘生态标签食品和未贴标签食品的视觉刺激的神经处理，来调查消费者对生态标签食品的态度。我们的结果表明，在行为上，参与者更喜欢购买生态标签食品而非未贴标签的食品。在神经层面，当呈现生态标签食品的图片时，我们观察到P2和N2波幅明显更小。此外，我们还发现P2波幅与参与者的购买意愿呈负相关。因此，我们目前的研究结果表明，虽然环保的生态标签并非符合个人利益，但它可能仍然具有启发性，能引发消费者的积极情绪，在购买决策中带来较少的认知冲突，进而导致更高的购买意愿。这种效应可能是社会期望所传递价值的结果。
