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December 1, 2025
Is Guilt Messaging the Path To Influencing Consumer Behavior?
A university study has found that telling consumers their returned items will be “kept out of landfills” significantly increases participation in take-back programs for apparel.
The researchers from Ohio State University, IESE Business School in Barcelona and Georgetown University noted that take-back programs face low consumer participation, limiting the programs’ long-term viability and effectiveness in supporting sustainability commitments.
The study found greater convenience — such as offering at-home pickup or easy mail-in options — also reduced the financial reward required from consumers to support take-back programs, but eco-benefit messaging particularly helped.
“We found that providing generic environmental information, that is, simply noting that collected items will be diverted from the landfill, significantly lowered the reward required for participation,” said Anna Sáez de Tejada Cuenca, of IESE Business School in Barcelona, in a statement.
On the other hand, when consumers learned that retailers would resell collected items for a profit, participation significantly dropped.
Guilt Messaging Could Influence Consumer Behavior, But Is it Ethical?
Guilt messaging appears to be a strong tool to toward encouraging other eco-friendly habits, such as discouraging fast-fashion purchases.
A survey of Americans conducted earlier this year, commissioned by HP, found people feel strong guilt around their environmental habits about 3.8 times per month on average — or nearly 50 times per year — including wasting food (31%); tossing items that could have been recycled (29%); and leaving the TV on when not watching (27%).
Around other causes, research from the University at Buffalo School of Management in New York found that despite guilt over animal welfare, people generally kept eating meat. The meat eaters justified their choice by picking a meat dish prepared more healthily, and/or citing the nutritional value of meat provides them.
Research from Montreal’s McGill University found individuals who experienced higher levels of “white guilt” were more likely to buy from Black-owned businesses than from white-owned ones, even when the minority-owned options were more expensive or had lower customer ratings.
Guilt Tipping As an Associated Behavior
Additionally, surveys continue to show Americans have been tipping more due to “guilt tipping” — suggested tip options offered on checkout tablet or tips requests from places not normally expected to require tips.
A survey last year from Talk Research found more than half (56%) of respondents feel always, or often, forced to tip more than they would like. Recent research from Washington State University (WSU) found guilt messaging works if it appeals to a person’s “general desire to better society,” but may backfire if people hearing the pitch are made to feel responsible for a bad situation.
WSU communication scientist Wei Peng said in a statement, “When people want to use guilt in an appeal, it may be better to use it implicitly to try to make other people feel they should take on this responsibility, rather than say explicitly that they are responsible for what other people are suffering.”
Discussion Questions
What do you think of using guilt messaging to support take-back programs and other environmental causes? How about social causes?
Do you find guilt messaging by retailers to be fair game or overly manipulative?
Poll
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Tom Ryan
Managing Editor, RetailWire
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Most consumers aspire to be sustainable, but they will only act on that intent when they’re not inconvenienced in terms of time, cost or effort. So, increasing participation in take-back schemes must involve removing friction. The offset for friction isn’t to guilt-trip people (that rarely works) but is increasing the reward. But what retailers can afford to be overly generous in paying consumers for used items?
As for tipping, I am sure some people do this, but I think a lot of folk are extremely fatigued by tipping and just refuse to do it in circumstances where it is not warranted or usual.
Absolutely. It’s gotten compltelty out of hand. I got a tip screen at a kisok at the airport recently. Seriously- I can’t fathom where the top would even go, since not a single human was involved in the transaction.
I don’t like using guilt messaging to modify or change behavior. It may be a Consumer Insight, but usually, there are better and more compelling insights than guilt.
Guilt messaging can work for environmental causes when it’s subtle, tied to simple actions, and genuinely relevant to the consumer’s life. But once it crosses into moral pressure, excessive responsibility, or shaming, it becomes manipulative and triggers defensiveness.
A better approach is to frame the effort as a collaborative solution—invite consumers to help, make participation easy, and reward them for taking part.
Seems to me this study had the issue inside out. At this point, nearly every consumer enjoys doing meaningful things for the world assuming they are within reason (effort, cost, etc) AND that they are meaningful. What has been missing, as Rory Sutherland has observed, are valid, useful steps consumers can take that matter. I don’t see these as “guilt messages” but messages offering consumers opportunity to take meaningful small actions. Sutherland suggested, for example, that great progress could be made by offering citizens a list of 10 achievable steps then asking them to choose their three every year. Along the way, meaning is critical for consumers. I recycle my Nespresso capsules partly because they offer some proof this matters by selling pens made from recycled capsules.
Guilting may work in the moment, but I don’t think it drives lasting behavioral change. We’ve seen with tipping culture that guilt-based nudges eventually create fatigue and frustration. If retailers want long-term participation in take-back programs, the better path is making it easy, rewarding, and aligned with how people already shop and recycle.
Traditionally, we tip when service is good and we expect to be able to return items we don’t want without being judged. Unfortunately, businesses are now lying to customers using generic environmental information to curb returns and are embarrassing consumers into tipping when tipping isn’t deserved. Playing games like this with your customers will eventually come back to bite you in the shorts. It always does.
I am fatigued by this sort of thing and find myself increasingly agitated when I see a guilt messagin. Feels like last year my coffes shop’s tip screens had 15%-18%-20%. Now they’re at 20%-25%-30%. Same rate I would tip a waiter at nice resturant who makes suggestions, opens wine and scrapes the crumbs off my placesetting. Far cry from filling a cup at an urn and handing it to me across a counter. Personally I don’t care for the guilt messaging. My wife on the other says it’s embarassing to be standing next to when i’m digging through screens looking for the 0% option.