Environmental Product Differentiation and Environmental Awareness

  1. Rodríguez-Ibeas, R. 1
  1. 1 Universidad de La Rioja
    info

    Universidad de La Rioja

    Logroño, España

    ROR https://ror.org/0553yr311

Revista:
Environmental and Resource Economics

ISSN: 0924-6460

Año de publicación: 2007

Volumen: 36

Número: 2

Páginas: 237-254

Tipo: Artículo

DOI: 10.1007/S10640-006-9026-Y SCOPUS: 2-s2.0-33846876065 WoS: WOS:000245357300005 GOOGLE SCHOLAR

Otras publicaciones en: Environmental and Resource Economics

Repositorio institucional: lock_openAcceso abierto Editor

Resumen

In this paper, we have considered a duopolistic model of environmental product differentiation with two types of consumers (green and brown) to analyze how environmental awareness affects the environment. "Green" consumers value the physical and environmental attributes of the good they purchase while "brown" consumers only value the physical attributes. We find that more environmental awareness may not be good news for the environment as the firm that produces the good without environmental attributes may increase its sales. The result depends on the degree of product differentiation and the cost to achieve it. Social welfare can also be inversely related to environmental awareness if the negative environmental effect dominates the positive market effect. © 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.