School of Economics & Management, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Jan 22;17(3):716. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17030716.
Consumer environmental awareness (CEA) can affect green consumption decisions in different and confusing ways. In order to explain the reasons for these divergences, this study divides CEA into two main components: the subjective effect and the social effect. Then, we integrate the two effects into the classic Hotelling model to study the influence of CEA's subjective effect and social effect on price competition and product differentiation strategy. It was found that the subjective and social effects of CEA have opposite impacts on price competition and product differentiation strategies. The subjective effect of CEA increases the price and profit level of enterprises, and enlarges the difference in the environmental friendliness of products. Meanwhile, the social effect of CEA reduces the enterprises' price and profit level, and narrows the difference in the environmental quality of products. Therefore, we suggest that it is necessary for producers of green products to distinguish between these two effects. Numerical examples are provided to verify our findings. Finally, some possible suggestions regarding the competition of green products are put forward which take into consideration the subjective and social effects of CEA. The main contribution of this paper is to theoretically explain the opposite effects of the two different components of CEA on environmentally friendly product pricing and differentiation strategy; this presents a possible explanation as to why the behavior regarding CEA differs, and provides theoretical support for enterprises to price and differentiate green products.
消费者环境意识（CEA）可以以不同且令人困惑的方式影响绿色消费决策。为了解释这些差异的原因，本研究将 CEA 分为两个主要组成部分：主观效应和社会效应。然后，我们将这两个效应整合到经典的霍特林模型中，研究 CEA 的主观效应和社会效应对价格竞争和产品差异化策略的影响。研究结果表明，CEA 的主观和社会效应对价格竞争和产品差异化策略有相反的影响。CEA 的主观效应提高了企业的价格和利润水平，并扩大了产品环境友好度的差异。同时，CEA 的社会效应降低了企业的价格和利润水平，并缩小了产品环境质量的差异。因此，我们建议绿色产品的生产者有必要区分这两种效应。我们提供了数值示例来验证我们的发现。最后，提出了一些可能的建议，考虑到 CEA 的主观和社会效应，对绿色产品的竞争进行了讨论。本文的主要贡献在于从理论上解释了 CEA 的两个不同组成部分对环保产品定价和差异化策略的相反影响；这为 CEA 行为差异提供了一种可能的解释，并为企业对绿色产品进行定价和差异化提供了理论支持。
