NO LONGER GREEN WITH ENVY: HOW TURNING EMOTIONS INTO OBJECTS ENABLES CONSUMERS TO PHYSICALLY DESTROY THEM

Abstract

Envy, as a result of upward social comparisons, is an unpleasant emotion that occurs when a consumer sees others as being more advantaged than him- or herself, in terms of achievements and/or possessions. Envy may drive the envious consumer to 'compete' with the envied-target through purchase of similar or better products; for that reason, envy is frequently used in advertising to motivate consumers to buy better products. While envy may be good for businesses as it may promote economic growth through the “keeping up with the Joneses” mechanism, envy tends to bring destructive behavior to consumers, especially in the long run. Departing from the view to maintain consumer welfare, we argue that envy should be reduced or perhaps, temporarily deactivated. Through a series of studies, we attempt to see if envy, as an emotion, can be transformed into an object upon which physical actions can be performed to destroy it, which thus reduces or temporarily deactivates envy. Furthermore, we want to see if any of these actions, assuming that envy is reduced or temporarily deactivated as a result, would lead consumers to adopt more pro-social behavior, as opposed to typical destructive behavior of envy.