환경성 표시광고에 대한 소비자오인과 소비자 반응

Abstract

The need for sustainable growth is accelerating the growth of the environment-friendly market, but green mark and advertising on product package clouds consumers' judgments and hinders their right decision-making. This study set out to examine the misconception of environment-friendly marks and advertisements among consumers and differences in consumer behavior according to green mark and advertising levels, thus proposing the right direction for green marks and advertisements. The marks and advertisements to which consumers were exposed through products were divided into message and mark types. Messages were further divided into misleading and non-misleading ones, and marks were further categorized into government-approved green marks and greenwashing marks. The objects of research were detergents in which consumers had easy access to green mark and advertising. The subjects included 400 adult consumers in their twenties or older. A structured questionnaire was developed for online survey. The findings show that the misconception level of consumers was high both in environment-friendly messages and marks. Consumers especially had very high misconception of marks. After consumer information was provided regarding green mark and advertising, consumers' reactions changed positively. The path analysis results reveal that consumers' attitude and purchase behavior dropped negatively for a product with a similar mark after they learned that the mark was not an official certification mark. In addition, a path coefficient, which represents the size of effects of attitude on purchase, also made a statistically significant decrease. These findings raise a need for corporations to check consumers' misconceptions of green mark and advertising themselves and utilize a preliminary check system for green marks and advertisements to be careful with their misconceptions. The government should monitor these marks and advertisements that are misleading for consumers and impose concerned regulations on corporations while providing them with supports to check consumers' misconceptions themselves. Furthermore, environment-friendly consumer education should help consumers make useful use of educational content in the consumption environment including the right understanding of green marks and advertisements, growing out of the old scope covering knowledge about green marks, related systems including green cards and stores, and attitude education about environment-friendly life.