Our Mission

We aim to quantify the Green Gap by rigorously examining the relationship between consumers’ pro-sustainability attitudes and their actual organic purchasing behavior across countries.

Advance reproducible research

To generate reliable, transparent, and reproducible findings that can be confidently used by policymakers and the scientific community.

Leverage big team science

To systematically examine how different analytical decisions (“degrees of freedom”) influence research outcomes in sustainability and marketing.

Strengthen methodological rigor

To promote the adoption of meta-scientific approaches in marketing research, improving robustness and credibility of empirical results.

Foster collaborative, transparent science

To enable coordinated collaboration among diverse research teams under standardized procedures, ensuring comparability and openness in scientific inquiry.

Call for Participation

Call Open

Context

This research project is a collaboration between the International Journal of Research in Marketing and AiMark, a non-profit institution promoting the use of consumer/household/scanner data in enhancing our understanding of marketing and its effectiveness. IJRM has agreed to publish one or more multi-author papers if they pass the dedicated review process for this project.

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Although consumers increasingly express concern for environmental sustainability and indicate a willingness to engage in sustainable consumption, these attitudes do not consistently translate into actual purchasing behavior. This discrepancy is commonly referred to as the “green gap”.
Understanding the gap between sustainable intentions and realized behavior is of substantial societal relevance. Reliable, reproducible, and robust findings are essential for enabling policymakers to make informed decisions based on scientific evidence.
The objective of this research project is to conceptualize and quantify the green gap by examining the relationship between pro-sustainability attitudes and actual sustainable consumption behavior.

  • How can we conceptually link consumers’ actual purchases of organic products with their attitude towards sustainable consumption?
  • What is the average marginal effect (in percentage points) of a one-standard-deviation increase in consumers’ pro-sustainability attitudes on their organic purchase share across five countries?

The replicability and credibility crisis have raised concerns about the robustness of scientific findings across multiple disciplines (Auspurg & Brüderl, 2021; Malich & Rehmann-Sutter, 2022; Peterson & Panofsky, 2023).

Big team science offers a promising approach to address these concerns by systematically investigating how researchers’ analytical decisions—often referred to as “degrees of freedom”—affect research outcomes (Wicherts et al., 2016).

Despite its relevance, the marketing discipline has not yet fully leveraged metascientific approaches to improve reproducibility. This research program aims to address this gap by systematically examining how different analytical choices influence conclusions about the green gap.

The project utilizes an anonymized household panel dataset provided by YouGov. The dataset includes aggregated household-level information on take-home food purchases

  • Total value and volume
  • Total organic value and volume
  • Total Private Label value and volume
  • Total Private Label organic value and volume
  • Responses to 16 statements related to sustainable consumption (e.g., “When shopping, I pay attention to products made from natural ingredients”), measured on varying scales (yes/no, 5-point Likert scales).

The dataset includes this information for more than 40,000 households in five countries for the years 2023 and 2024.

Participating teams are asked to document the results of their analyses using a provided template and to submit an annotated data analysis script which allows rerunning the syntax.

To participate, research teams must meet the following criteria:

  • At least one team member holds a PhD in business administration, psychology, or a related field
  • A minimum of three and a maximum of four researchers
  • Each researcher may participate in only one team
  • Teams agree to be available for interviews with the organizing team
  • Teams agree to a potential pre-registration submission
  • Teams agree to complete brief pre- and post-study surveys

A multiple-blind procedure will be applied. Participating researchers and project investigators are not permitted to disclose any information related to their analyses or the project to other researchers until all submissions have been completed and the project has officially concluded.

All researchers who submit results in accordance with the project guidelines will be listed as co-authors on the initial publication.

Timeline

2026
Registration Deadline

Register as research team, enter your credentials and receive detailed information about your task.

Acceptance Notification

We screen the applications and accept successful research teams. Hereafter, NDAs are sent out.

Distribution of Study Materials

All study materials and a pre-study survey are sent out to the research teams.

Pre-registration Deadline

Those teams that need to pre-register their study must do so.

2027
Submission of Results

Research teams submit their analyses, results, and replication materials, and complete the post-study survey.

First Draft of Paper

The coordination team synthesizes results and prepares a draft manuscript with all contributing teams listed as co-authors.

Manuscript Submission

Submission of the manuscript to a peer-reviewed academic journal (subject to the standard review process).

FAQ

Get answers to our most commonly asked questions.

General

This project is coordinated by an interdisciplinary team of marketing and consumer research scholars:

  • Karin Teichmann, University of Innsbruck
  • Oliver Koll, University of Innsbruck
  • Jenny van Doorn, University of Groningen
  • Bernd Reitsamer, University of Innsbruck
  • Nicola Stokburger-Sauer, University of Innsbruck

The coordination team is responsible for study design, data collection, randomization procedures, and synthesis of results.

The project is open to the international scientific research community.

To participate, at least one member of each research team must have an active affiliation with a university or research institution or be enrolled as a PhD student.

Participating research teams are required to:

  • Analyze the provided dataset independently
  • Address the predefined study questions
  • Submit a complete description of their conceptualization, analytical strategy, and results using a provided template
  • Provide fully reproducible code used for all analyses
  • Comply with the project’s multiple-blind and non-collaboration rules

Research teams will be asked to complete brief pre- and post-study surveys. Some research teams will additionally be asked to submit a pre-registration of their research plan and/or to participate in interviews, as specified in the study plan.

All research teams answer the same two core questions:

  1. How can we conceptually link consumers’ actual purchases of organic products with their attitude towards sustainable consumption?
  2. What is the average marginal effect (in percentage points) of a one-standard-deviation increase in consumers’ pro-sustainability attitudes on their organic purchase share across five countries?

Teams are free to choose their conceptual definitions, statistical models, and estimation strategies, within the provided data constraints.

We aim to recruit approximately 140 research teams, anticipating a dropout rate of about 30%, resulting in around 100 active teams contributing final analyses.

No. To ensure independence of analytical decisions, research teams must work fully independently and are not allowed to discuss analyses, interim results, or methodological choices with members of other teams.

Yes. Participation requires the ability to work with complex observational data and to conduct quantitative statistical analyses relevant to consumer behavior and marketing research.

Yes. All teams must submit the complete analysis code used to generate their results (e.g., R, Python, Stata, SPSS, Matlab). Code transparency and reproducibility are central to the project.

Yes. The project has been reviewed and approved by the ethics review board of the University of Innsbruck.

Questions can be directed to the project coordination team via the official project contact email or directly to the coordinators.

By participating, you contribute to:

  • Advancing knowledge on the robustness and variability of evidence on sustainable consumption
  • Improving understanding of researcher’s degrees of freedom and biases
  • Developing best practices for many-analyst and open science research designs

All research teams that successfully complete the study requirements will be listed as co-authors on the resulting scientific publication.

The manuscript will be submitted to a leading peer-reviewed journal and will undergo the standard review process.

Data

The project uses a dataset combining:

  • Total volume and value of purchases across food categories, with splits showing the volume and value of organic and Private Label purchases
  • Survey-based measures of attitudes toward sustainable consumption

The dataset is centrally curated and provided to all participating research teams to ensure that all analyses are conducted based on the same empirical material.

No. The dataset is provided exclusively for use within the Green Gap Project.

  • Participants may only use the data to address the predefined research questions
  • The coordination team will archive the dataset for verification and replication purposes
  • Research teams must delete all local copies of the data after submitting their final
  • Any additional use of the data beyond this project is strictly prohibited.

The dataset includes consumer purchase and survey data from five European countries: Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, and Romania.

The empirical focus of the project is the green gap, defined as the relationship between:

  • Consumers’ attitudes toward sustainable consumption, and
  • Their actual purchasing behavior, operationalized through observed purchases of organic products

The data allow teams to link attitudinal measures to real-world consumer behavior at the individual level.

The primary behavioral outcome is consumers’ actual organic purchasing behavior, typically operationalized as:

  • the share of organic products in total purchases, or
  • related transformations derived from observed purchase records

Research teams may propose alternative operationalizations, provided they are theoretically justified and clearly documented.

The dataset contains standardized measures capturing attitudes toward sustainable consumption. Teams are free to:

  • Select specific items or scales
  • Combine measures into indices
  • Apply data transformations or re-scaling

All choices must be reported transparently and reproducibly.

The raw data are provided at the individual household level.

All teams are required to estimate the average marginal effect (percentage points) of a one-standard deviation increase in consumers’ pro-sustainability attitudes on their organic purchase share for each of five countries.

The precise functional form, statistical model, and estimation strategy are chosen by each team, subject to the constraints of the provided data.

Yes. Bayesian approaches are explicitly allowed. If you use Bayesian estimation, please report:

  • The posterior mean (as the point estimate)
  • The posterior standard deviation (as an analogue to the standard error)
  • An interpretable Bayesian analogue to a p-value (e.g., posterior mass on the opposite side of zero)

Allowing teams to make independent choices regarding:

  • Conceptualization
  • Variable construction
  • Statistical modeling
  • Estimation techniques

is a core feature of the project, enabling systematic examination of researchers’ degrees of freedom, analytical variability, and potential biases in green gap research.

Timeline, Tasks & Submissions

The timeline (subject to change) is as follows:

  • July 2026: Deadline for research team registration
  • August 2026: Notification of acceptance
  • September 2026: Distribution of study materials and pre-study survey
  • October 2026: Deadline for potential pre-registration
  • February 2027: Deadline for submission of analyses, results, and replication materials
  • Second half of 2027: Coordination team synthesizes results and prepares a draft manuscript with all contributing teams listed as co-authors
  • Thereafter: Submission of the manuscript to a peer-reviewed academic journal (subject to the standard review process)

The required time depends on the team’s experience, modeling choices, and analytical depth. As a rough guideline, participating teams should expect to spend approximately 20–40 hours on the project.

Once accepted, research teams will receive the agreement by email. The document can be signed electronically and must be returned before data access is granted.

For administrative and ethical compliance, participants may be asked to provide a copy of a valid passport or official ID. How do I access the data?

After the signed agreement is received, teams will be provided with:

  • A link to a short questionnaire
  • Access to the data repository and detailed documentation

Data access may depend on the team’s assigned experimental condition (e.g., preregistration vs. immediate access).

Each team will receive a unique submission link prior to the submission deadline. Through this link, teams will be asked to:
Upload of required files:

  1. Documentation of findings in a provided template.
  2. A replication package (zipped), including
  • All code used to process the data and generate results (with clear comments)
  • A README explaining how to reproduce the analyses, required software, and execution order

Teams are expected to follow established data and code documentation standards to the best of their ability.
Optional:

  • Additional materials the team wishes to share (e.g., robustness checks, alternative specifications)

All submitted analyses, estimates, and survey responses are treated confidentially during the analysis phase.

In project reporting, individual results cannot be traced back to specific research teams.

Coordinators

The Green Gap Project is coordinated by a team of researchers from the University of Innsbruck.

Registration

Sign up as a research team and join our open science project.

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