When "Buy Less" Backfires: Green Demarketing and the Nongreen Consumer,

In this episode, we speak with Matthew Pittman (University of Tennessee) to discuss his article, "Green Demarketing to Nongreen Consumers: Individuals With Low Environmental Concern Don't Believe Messages to 'Buy Less'," coauthored with Tyler Milfeld (Villanova University) and Eric Haley (University of Tennessee), just published in the June 2026 issue of JAR.Matthew explains what green demarketing is: a more progressive form of green advertising that urges consumers to buy less of anything, made famous by Patagonia's "Don't Buy This Jacket" campaign. Drawing on two online experiments and a real-world Instagram field experiment, the first to test demarketing in a social media field setting, Matthew unpacks how and when "buy less" appeals backfire. The headline finding is that green demarketing generates lower purchase intentions than traditional green advertising and the mechanism is sequential: consumers first judge the source as less credible, which in turn makes the message less believable. Crucially, this effect is driven by consumers with low environmental concern. Highly green consumers respond just as well to demarketing as they do to conventional green appeals.The practical takeaway for advertisers is to try and gauge your audience's level of environmental concern and to recognize that "don't buy" messages only land when a brand has built up the environmental credibility, as Patagonia has, to back them up. Our discussion also digs into the field experiment, including the creative challenge of targeting nongreen consumers on social media when ad platforms only let you target what people like, not what they dislike. Read the full paper here: https://doi.org/10.1080/00218499.2025.2582341To keep up to date on the latest JAR news sign up for our newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/mtD04QNAnd follow us on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/82528291/admin/