Food overconsumption is increasingly a concern even as consumers are growing skeptical of companies’ green marketing techniques. Accordingly, green demarketing strategies, which aim to lower consumer demand, have become more prevalent in recent years. Using an online experiment, the current research investigates how green demarketing strategies (vs. green marketing strategy) affect consumers’ level of skepticism toward restaurants’ green practices and influence their dining intentions toward restaurants. Moreover, this study examines how different benefits (health vs. environment) associated with green practices and restaurants’ green reputations (high vs. low) influence the effect of green demarketing (vs. marketing) strategies. The results reveal that although green demarketing may not independently outperform green marketing, when green demarketing was practiced by restaurants with low green reputations to promote environment-associated benefits, consumers exhibited a similar or even lower levels of skepticism and higher dining intentions. This study also provides implications for effective marketing communication in the context of green demarketing.

尽管消费者越来越怀疑公司的绿色营销技术，但食品过度消费日益成为一个问题。因此，旨在降低消费者需求的绿色去营销策略近年来变得更加普遍。通过在线实验，当前的研究调查了绿色去营销策略（相对于绿色营销策略）如何影响消费者对餐厅绿色实践的怀疑程度，并影响他们对餐厅的用餐意向。此外，本研究考察了与绿色实践和餐厅的绿色声誉（高与低）相关的不同益处（健康与环境）如何影响绿色去营销（与营销）策略的效果。结果表明，虽然绿色去营销可能不会独立胜过绿色营销，当绿色声誉较低的餐厅实施绿色营销以促进与环境相关的利益时，消费者表现出类似甚至更低水平的怀疑和更高的用餐意向。本研究还为绿色去营销背景下的有效营销传播提供了启示。