This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Sustainability has become an increasingly visible feature of consumer-packaged goods (CPGs), from the ingredients used in household products to the materials and design of their packaging. For companies marketing sustainable products, however, an important question remains: Does communicating more environmental benefits necessarily improve how consumers evaluate a product?
Although highlighting several sustainability features may provide a more complete picture, consumers may not respond to all this information in the same way. This question prompted professor Miyuri Shirai of the Faculty of Business and Commerce at Keio University, Japan, to investigate how consumers evaluate products when sustainability is communicated through product composition, packaging or both. The study published in Journal of Environmental Psychology on Nov. 1, 2026, examines whether consumers' green consumption values (GCVs) influence their responses to these different messages.
Reflecting on her motivation, Shirai explains, "My interest in this research began when I read articles about the embedding effect, which suggest that adding more positive information does not always make an option seem better. I became curious about whether communicating multiple sustainability benefits might sometimes be less effective than highlighting just one, depending on the consumer." The research comprised three studies in Japan, involving laundry detergent, organic granola and body wash. The studies included 626, 600 and 503 participants, respectively, for a combined sample of 1,729 people.
Participants viewed advertisements for fictional products that communicated sustainability through composition alone, packaging alone or both. They then evaluated the products, allowing the researcher to examine how responses differed according to GCVs—the importance individuals place on environmentally responsible consumption. Across all three studies, GCVs influenced how participants responded to the sustainability messages.
Those with higher GCVs evaluated products more favorably when sustainability was highlighted through both composition and packaging than when it was communicated through either attribute alone. Participants with lower GCVs showed the opposite pattern, responding more favorably to messages focused on a single attribute. These findings suggest that communicating multiple sustainability benefits does not produce the same response across consumer groups.
For people who place greater importance on green consumption, information about both the product and its packaging may provide complementary cues when judging sustainability. For those who place less importance on green consumption, combining the two types of information may be less effective. The results are consistent with the embedding-effect perspective, which proposes that adding positive information does not always improve an overall evaluation.
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