How do implicit/explicit attitudes and emotional reactions to sustainable logo relate? A neurophysiological study

Food package labels can be used to influence consumers’ evaluation and purchasing behaviour, fostering sustainable consumption. Therefore, it is important to understand consumers’ emotional reaction to food package labels that convey sustainable information. The aim of the present research is to get a better understanding of the relation between consumers’ attitudes and emotional reactions often used to measure the effectiveness of a communication. Particularly, we focused on recyclability, assessing participants’ prior explicit and implicit attitudes towards recyclability and their emotional reaction to food packages featuring logos of (non-)recyclability. The emotional reaction was measured both at an explicit and at an implicit level, using direct (self-reported) and indirect (eye movement, facial expressions and pupil dilation) techniques respectively. Results showed that explicit attitudes predicted self-reported emotions, while implicit attitudes predicted the spontaneous emotional reactions, highlighting the importance to assess both explicit and implicit attitudes. Moreover, results showed that the relation between the time that people looked at the logo and the spontaneous emotional reaction was contingent upon the participant's implicit attitudes. Finally, a follow-up analysis revealed that people with positive implicit attitudes towards recyclability were faster in detecting the recyclable logo and spent more time on processing the logo which on its turn resulted in better emotional reactions. Thus, the results suggest that implicit attitudes influence both visual attention and emotional reactions. Overall, the research contributes to a better understanding of the relation between prior attitudes and emotional reactions to food packaging, and supports the use of an approach that comprises both direct and indirect measures of attitudes and emotions.