Children's response to “ecofriendly” labelling: The role of self-concept clarity

Research on adults has examined the effectiveness of social labelling on influencing consumption, especially ecofriendly consumption, and has proposed a self-concept-based mechanism to explain the effectiveness. Surprisingly, however, despite the growth in children's consumption autonomy at an earlier age and their influence on other family members and peers, social labelling effectiveness has scarcely been investigated among children. In addition, discussions of the mechanisms of social labelling have remained at a theorizing level. To address these gaps, this research shows that a nonintrusive ecofriendly social labelling protocol is effective at triggering preadolescents' pro-environmental dispositions and behaviours, thus eliminating the social dilemma that may come into play in this context. It also demonstrates the counterintuitive moderating role of self-concept clarity in this process, with preadolescents who display a clearer self-concept being more likely to act according to the label. These original findings have implications for public policy makers and follow-up research.