Bio:

Eric Klebeck is a doctoral candidate at the Chair of Marketing & Innovation (Prof. Dr. Sabine Kuester) at the University of Mannheim, where he has been pursuing his PhD since June 2022. His research broadly examines the role of social identity in consumer behavior, with a particular interest in sustainable consumption. Drawing on political psychology and experimental methods, he studies how identity-based motives shape consumers' sustainable product choices.

https://www.bwl.uni-mannheim.de/en/kuester/team/research-associates/eric-klebeck/

Abstract: 

Household consumption accounts for a substantial share of global greenhouse gas emissions, making sustainable consumption a key lever for individual-level emission reduction. Yet engagement in sustainable consumption remains uneven across the U.S. political spectrum, with conservatives typically showing lower adoption than liberals. To advance understanding of why these differences persist, we conceptualize political ideology as a social identity and examine whether sustainable consumption serves identity maintenance functions. In two prestudies, we validate a widely shared cultural stereotype linking sustainable consumption to liberal identity. Three preregistered experiments then trace its consequences. Study 1 shows that threatening political identity shifts sustainable preferences in opposite directions, increasing them among liberals while decreasing them among conservatives. Study 2 provides direct process evidence, with perceived identity affirmation mediating these divergent effects, indicating that liberals embrace sustainable products to reaffirm their identity whereas conservatives avoid them as identity-incongruent. Study 3 translates these insights into an intervention test in which identity-congruent framing increases sustainable preferences among conservatives. Together, these findings document identity maintenance as a driver of polarized sustainable preferences and suggest two complementary pathways for increasing sustainable choice: activating identity-related concerns among liberals and reducing identity incongruence among conservatives through congruent framing.