Developing consumers’ paradox mindsets: Making sense of tensions in sustainability

Abstract

Greening, or adopting sustainable business practices, requires firms to balance economic, environmental, and social goals, which often creates tensions in sustainability. Firms frequently employ paradoxical logic to manage these tensions, pursuing these objectives simultaneously and without prioritization. However, using paradoxical logic may make it difficult for firms to communicate their greening initiatives to consumers. Messages that conflict with consumers' existing mental frameworks may amplify perceived tensions, arousing cognitive dissonance. Consumers with limited paradox mindsets may be unable to make sense of these tensions or tolerate their cognitive dissonance, prompting them to avoid or exit the firm or question its commitment to greening. To reduce these risks, greening firms need to consider and actively develop consumers’ paradox mindsets when crafting their sustainability communications. This paper draws on connections between cognitive dissonance and sensemaking to develop a conceptual model that illustrates how greening firms can develop consumers’ paradox mindsets. Through this iterative process, firms challenge consumers’ existing mental frameworks and offer sense-giving narratives that reframe tensions in sustainability as interdependent and complementary, reducing consumers’ cognitive dissonance. By tailoring their messages to align with consumers’ varying receptivity to paradoxical logic and sensitivity to tensions in sustainability, greening firms can craft coherent narratives that promote consumer engagement with the sensemaking process. When this process is successful, greening firms can develop consumers’ paradox mindsets and, thus, their ability to make sense of tensions in sustainability. This paper extends the literature on paradox mindset development from managers and employees to firm-consumer communications.