Hedonic and environmental quality: A hybrid model of product differentiation

In this paper, we analyze how strategic competition between a green firm and a browncompetitor develops when their products are differentiated along two dimensions: hedonicquality and environmental quality. The former dimension refers to the pure (intrinsic) per-formance of the good, whereas the latter dimension has a positional content: buying greengoods satisfies the consumer’s desire to be portrayed as a socially worthy citizen. We con-sider the case in which these quality dimensions are in conflict with each other so that thehigher the hedonic quality of a good, the lower the corresponding environmental quality.We characterize the equilibrium configurations and discuss the policy implications derivingfrom our analysis.