The Spell of Green: Can Frontal EEG Activations Identify Green Consumers?

Abstract

Green consumers are those who seek to fulfill economic responsibility with their choices of environment-friendly products. Previous research found that it is not easy to identify green consumers by using traditional demographic or psychographic measurements due to the instability of moral attitude and actual behavior. The frontal theta brain waves of 19 right-handed respondents were recorded and analyzed in a choice task between an environment-friendly (green) product and a conventional product. Product information, which was provided to the respondents, included written descriptions as well as the price of each product without visual depiction. Based on the respondents' choice, they were classified into two groups: green (GR) consumers who chose an environment-friendly product option and non-green (Non-GR) consumers who chose the option of a conventional product. While processing the green product message, we discovered that frontal theta activations were significantly higher among GR consumers than Non-GR consumers. On the contrary, the frontal theta waves of GR consumers were not differentiated from Non-GR consumers while processing the price information. Therefore, theta activations in the frontal area may potentially be a unique neural indicator of GR consumers' cognitive engagement with environment-friendly product messages.