Green living is at present a very popular topic as it’s always mentioned in the media. The green community of the economy is going to be creating many new jobs for people and new, green energy sources are being investigated to replace old energy sources. But what exactly will thrive in the Green Economy can only be determined by consumers reaction to them. To discover what will succeed is to initially figure out precisely why people would want to go eco-friendly?
I’ve often been curious about why people would actually do this. The obvious reason is that many people who try to live green are concerned about saving the environment. Or it’s possible that many people are curious about the latest green technologies. The third rationale I came up with was spending less, but in most cases being enviromentally friendly can cost a lot more (at least to start with).
Well, some researching was done and based on the Wall Street Journal none of those answers are correct. The actual answer is simply pressure from peers. That’s all there is, merely plain old peer pressure.
There was an experiment performed where to placards were located in the hotel bathrooms. These placards motivated guests to use their bathroom towels more than one time. One placard showed the words “Show your regard for nature.” The 2nd placard had as a statement “Join your fellow guests in assisting to save the environment.” It proved that 75% of guests did follow the appeal to reuse the bathroom towels. As you will have guessed, most folks reused their towels when reading the second placard that said their fellow guests were doing it also. In a follow up analysis the placards were altered slightly and the second one now read “75% of attendees using this suite reused their towels”. This sign made a lot more individuals reuse their towels.
So as you have seen peer pressure worked in this situation, just as it truly does work in most situations in life. Telling people that others are carrying out something rather than just telling them to save the world is more effective at getting everyone to be green.
This study and its results indicates there are certain implications for companies that market these green products to consumers. Peer pressure triggers a sense of remorse in people to a point that everyday people will do something. So it appears that companies should center their marketing on making people feel guilty if they don’t go green. Organizations will try to pull off some thing similar to the hotel experiment.
It was a bit of a surprise when I learned what the results were of that hotel experiment. But when I seriously look at it, it really not all that suprising. I guess individuals psychologically adapt to what others do because it may be less difficult or we simply don’t want to be viewed as different.
That’s it, the real reason why people would want to live green. In spite of all the reasons of saving the planet, it’s good old peer pressure that will cause people to change. They realize that when they learn how to live green they can then learn how to get skinny and even learn how to eat to lose weight and keep it off.