Evaluative Conditioning in Consumer Psychology: Can Affective Images of Climate Change Influence Sustainability Perception of Supermarket Products?

Most individuals are aware of the wastefulness of plastic packaging but do not know what sustainable packaging exactly is or choose not to buy it. In an effort to educate consumers about the sustainability of their products, the current study employed an evaluative conditioning approach in which sustainable and unsustainable products were paired with affective images of climate change. We hypothesized that conditioning consumers with positive and negative images of nature would either reinforce or weaken their perception of the sustainability of the product. Sustainability Ratings revealed that consumers already had a strong opinion about (un)sustainability of the product packaging. Nevertheless, the information provided during the conditioning phase impacted their ratings such that sustainable products that were paired with a negative image were perceived less sustainable after conditioning. These results have implications for communication practitioners and pave the way for future research into evaluative conditioning as a technology to impact consumer attitude and behavior.