With increased awareness of environmental concerns, companies across industries have begun using recycled materials to manufacture their products. Evidence shows, however, that not all consumers react positively to companies’ efforts to produce recycled content products. To understand that phenomenon, current research focuses on how consumers’ implicit theories (i.e., entity vs. incremental theories) affect their reactions to such products. Because recycled materials are made from waste, entity theorists, who believe that traits are immutable, are expected to be more likely than incremental theorists, who believe that traits are flexible, to perceive that recycled materials cannot have the same quality as non-recycled materials and thus react more negatively to recycled content products. Three experiments provided evidence that holding an entity (vs. incremental) theory of personal traits deters the consumption of recycled content products, in a relationship mediated by differences in the perceived quality of such products.

随着对环境问题意识的增强，各行各业的公司已开始使用回收材料来制造其产品。但是，有证据表明，并非所有消费者都对公司生产再生内容产品的努力做出积极反应。为了理解这种现象，当前的研究集中在消费者的隐性理论（即实体与增量理论）如何影响他们对此类产品的反应上。由于回收材料是由废料制成的，因此，认为特质是不变的，实体理论家比那些认为特质是灵活的增量理论家更有可能认为回收材料不能具有与非回收材料相同的质量。从而对回收的内容产品产生负面影响。