Grove Insight Poll: Oregonians Will Pay More for Green Products
There Appears to Be High Demand for Sustainable Products
Over eight in 10 voters say that it is important to them to purchase sustainable products, or products made with minimal environmental impact.
Oregonians appear willing to put their money where their mouth is. Over two-thirds of voters indicate they will pay a premium for a sustainable product made with minimal environmental impact.
Views of the importance of buying sustainable products vary depending on gender, homeowner status, and media market. Women, typically the primary purchaser in a household; renters, who are not working on paying off mortgages; and, those residing in the Bend and Medford media markets are more inclined than their demographic counterparts to place importance on buying products made with minimal environmental impact. There are no glaring differences of opinion based on age, level of education, or parental status.
Health and Political Concerns, as well as Grassroots Appeals Motivate Sustainable Buying
To help understand what considerations motivate this type of consumer behavior, Green Insight asked voters to rate the importance of 11 different reasons to pay a price premium for environmentally sustainable products.
As we have often found, health concerns seem to be of chief importance when deciding to pay a premium on the purchase of environmentally sustainable products, such as food and furniture. According to over seven in 10 Oregonians, two of the top three reasons to pay more for such goods are that they are free of toxic chemicals and are healthy.
With the War in Iraq, it has become increasingly clear to voters that the United State’s dependency on foreign oil is a threat to national security. In this political climate, it is not surprising that three-quarters of voters agree that paying more to purchase environmentally sustainable products helps reduce the country’s use of foreign oil.
The grassroots appeal of purchasing sustainable products falls a little bit lower on the list of important reasons to pay more for such products, including that paying more for sustainable products reduces one’s impact on the local environment; demands the use of locally-made and grown products; and, creates local jobs.
Important to about six in 10 voters are the environmental considerations that purchasing sustainable products helps reduce global warming, uses recycled materials, and reduces one’s ecological impact on the environment. Notice that one’s personal impact on the environment is of less importance in purchasing decisions than the more general notion that such behavior reduces environmental impact.
Yet, both reasons appear in regression modeling, a statistical tool used to help determine what reasons predict consumers’ motivation to pay more for sustainable products. In other words, knowing that environmentally sustainable products reduces both the impact on one’s local environment more generally, as well as one’s personal “footprint” on the environment, motivates voters to pay more for green goods.
Least important to voters as far as reasons to pay more for sustainable products goes is that the product is organic or certified by an independent organization.
Oregonians Say They Are Much More Likely to Select Local Over National Brands
Oregon voters are over five times as likely to select local over national brands.
Preference for local versus national brands differs geographically. Voters in the traditionally more politically liberal area of the state, the tri-county area, (Multnomah, Washington, and Clackamas counties) purchase locally more often than voters in the rest of the state. Yet, voters in the Portland, Bend, and Medford media markets claim to select local brands more frequently than those in the Eugene media market. Renters are slightly more inclined to purchase local than homeowners. Significant differences on the basis of other demographic categories, such as gender, age, level of education, and parental status do not occur.
In the first of an ongoing series, Green Insight, a division of Grove Insight, reports on basic consumer trends in the emerging sustainability market.
About Green Insight
Green Insight provides market research, consultation, and strategy for environmentally conscious companies and organizations seeking to gain a foothold in the emerging sustainability or green market.
Green Insight is a division of Grove Insight, one of the leading progressive polling firms in the West, founded by Lisa Grove. Grove has been the lead strategist for political candidates, public interest groups, government entities, and labor unions. Grove Insight has conducted polls and moderated hundreds of focus groups and dial test sessions for Presidential, Senatorial, Gubernatorial and Congressional candidates and has one of the best records on initiatives in the country (54 and 7).
The firm has also worked for many environmental organizations and was an early pioneer in the branding of the sustainability movement. Grove was the first to come to the drinking water message as a rationale for saving Old Growth forests. She also came up with the rationale to label the Tillamook and Clatsop forests “rainforests” to increase the importance of protecting them. She heads up the new Green Insight division.
Not only does Green Insight report and provide research and branding advice on all things green, Lisa Grove also runs IF Green (www.ifgreen.com), a furniture and cabinet company that uses only sustainable materials and is known for its award-winning designs. She does not just report on the sustainability movement, she is a part of it.
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