Reestablishing Intrapersonal Balance Through Restoration: An Integrated Framework to Escape Dissonance

Abstract

The shift towards a higher level of societies’ environmental concern has been mirrored in the increasing number of research studies conducted within an environmental context. Yet, the research is at times not well developed theoretically, leading to the need for an expansion of marketing thought to incorporate environmental responsibility within established theories used in the discipline. The current conceptual research study is a direct response to this request by proposing an integrative framework that incorporates six commonly applied theoretical constructs within the marketing literature: balance theory, social comparison theory, cognitive dissonance, escape theory, restoration theory, and negative self-conscious emotions. Balance theory is adapted to an overarching umbrella that interconnects various concepts into one comprehensive framework, which is put forward within the context of environmentalism and ecological behavior. This study extends the scope of social comparison theory by arguing that social competition is not the only behavioral outcome of social comparison as behavior can also be tailored towards reestablishing an intrapersonal balance. In addition, restorative behavior is adjusted to incorporate ecological and environmentally conscious behavior, a concept not introduced into the literature up to this point. Finally, balance theory was conceptualized with a more significant focus on the internal balance within humans instead of focusing on the balance among triadic relationships. Overall, the proposed framework’s main contribution is its flexibility as it warrants to be extended to different contexts beyond environmental consciousness and ecological behavior. Thus, it is a relatively general theoretical construct. Indeed, individuals experience social comparison in nearly every aspect of their life. Marketing research addresses social comparison in contexts ranging from reactions to models in advertising to encounters with service providers. Lastly, the integrative framework and the accompanying propositions are expected to result in an identification of additional significant factors that will allow the casual explanation of ecological behavior.