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Packaging waste makes up more than 10% of the landfilled waste in the United States. While consumers often want to make environmentally friendly product choices, we find that their perceptions of the environmental friendliness of product packaging may systematically deviate from its objective environmental friendliness. Eight studies (N = 4,103) document the perceived environmental friendliness (PEF) bias whereby consumers judge plastic packaging with additional paper to be more environmentally friendly than identical plastic packaging without the paper. The PEF bias is driven by consumers' "paper = good, plastic = bad" beliefs and by proportional reasoning, wherein packaging with a greater paper-to-plastic proportion is judged as more environmentally friendly. We further show that the PEF bias impacts consumers' willingness to pay and product choice. Importantly, this bias can be mitigated by a "minimal packaging sticker" intervention, which increases the environmental friendliness perceptions of plastic-only packaging, rendering plastic-packaged products to be preferable to their plastic-plus-paper-packaged counterparts. This research contributes to the packaging literature in marketing and to research on sustainability while offering practical implications for managers and public policy officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research documents systematic gender performance differences (GPD) at a top business school using a unique administrative data set and survey of students. The findings show that women's grades are 11% of a standard deviation lower in quantitative courses than those of men with similar academic aptitude and demographics, and men's grades are 23% of a standard deviation lower in nonquantitative courses than those of comparable women. The authors discuss and test for different reasons to explain this finding. They show that a female instructor significantly cuts down GPD for quantitative courses by raising the relative grades of female students. In addition, female instructors increase women's interest and performance expectations in these courses and are perceived as role models by their female students. These results provide support for a gender stereotype process for GPD and show that faculty can serve as powerful exemplars to challenge gender stereotypes and increase student achievement. The authors discuss several important implications of these findings for business schools and for society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consumers set a lower consumption budget when they set individual calorie budgets for constituent categories (e.g., breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks; categorical approach) versus when they set a total budget (overall approach). This contraction effect of unpacking a judgment is driven by motivated reasoning. Consumers are motivated to reduce calorie consumption, and this motive directs their cognitive elaboration for the budget decision to be on what to cut and how much to cut. Furthermore, the categorical (vs. overall) approach brings to mind more thoughts that are consistent with the motive to reduce consumption, which then leads to a lower calorie budget. Consistent with this explanation, the level of elaboration on reducing calorie intake—especially on occasions where overconsumption is less salient—mediates the contraction effect. In addition, the contraction effect is attenuated when the motive to reduce consumption is deactivated. Finally, while the contraction effect occurs when consumers have a motive to reduce consumption, the classic expansion effect of unpacking occurs when consumers are prompted to think about what to consume or are motivated to increase consumption. The results for calorie budgeting are shown to have downstream consequences on actual food consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]