Exploring green product attributes and their effect on consumer behaviour: A systematic review

Despite the growing scholars' attention towards green products, extant literature has so far lacked a systematic effort to analyse green product attributes (along different phase of the product life cycle) and link them to consumer preferences/behaviour. Indeed, the green product (and related processes) design and the consumer behaviour perspectives have been mostly treated separately to date. However, understanding consumer behaviour towards products as characterized by different green attributes, that may be related to different phases of product life cycle, is key for green products' market success. For these reasons, this study aims at linking the design and the consumer behaviour aspects of green product development. Specifically, through a systematic review, this study analyses extant research to provide a comprehensive list of green product attributes organized following a product lifecycle management perspective and a discussion of the effect of different green product attributes on consumers' behaviour. Eighty-two articles were included in the review and analysed. We identified 73 individual green product attributes and categorized them into 18 attribute groups, which were associated with product life cycle management phases (production, use, and end-of-life). Our results show that, in the production lifecycle phase, there is high incidence of environmentally sustainable attributes, and they are mostly related to production efficiency. Consumers perceive less this type of attributes, probably because they are placed before consumption. In the use phase, environmentally sustainable attributes depend more on consumers' actions to realize their sustainable value and they focus on technologies to reduce consumption. Finally, end-of-life environmentally sustainable attributes are related to the after-consumption stage of products, and they depend more on external actors to realize their value. Findings from previous studies about the effect of product attributes (identified for each product lifecycle phase) on consumer behaviour (such as purchase intention or willingness to pay a premium price) are reported. Results show that, for many attributes, no study has addressed their effect on consumer behaviour and that attributes for which there is a greater amount of studies on consumer behaviour are those related to the production and use phase. A future research agenda is proposed to advance knowledge on the role of green product attributes and their effect on consumer behaviour.