Social exclusion has garnered much attention from researchers across the social sciences, especially among social psychologists. However, given the fact that social relationships and consumption are two of the central activities in daily life, there is surprisingly little research on the impact of social connection threats within the realm of consumer behavior. This study examines the effect of social exclusion on proenvironmental behavior and green consumption. More precisely, the objectives of this study are threefold. The first objective is to examine whether the findings in social psychology literature on how excluded individuals respond to exclusion when they are exposed to proenvironmental consumption behavior. The second objective of this research is to find the underlying mechanism and to rule out some of the possible explanations (e.g., mood) for this effect. The final objective of this study is to establish some of the boundary conditions (individual differences and situational factors) for the proposed effect. The hypotheses of this study were developed based on two main theoretical bases borrowed from social psychology literature: empathy-altruism hypothesis (Batson 1991) and social reconnection hypothesis (Maner et al. 2007). Overall, it was proposed that while social exclusion decreases individuals’ inclination to engage in proenvironmental activities, socially excluded people are motivated to use green consumption behaviors to establish new social bonds with others. These propositions were tested and supported across four experiments. Across these experiments, the findings demonstrated that social exclusion causes people to express lower tendency to engage in proenvironmental behaviors. The findings also consistently suggest that mood does not explain why social rejection leads to negative environmental outcomes. Additionally, social exclusion appears to cause a temporary absence of empathic concern toward others, which leads to less green behavior with altruistic motivation. Further, the role of emotional empathy as a boundary condition was tested in this study and the findings indicate that experiencing social exclusion does not negatively impact proenvironmental behavior in highly empathetic individuals. Finally, this investigation showed that when a proenvironmental behavior is perceived as an opportunity to reconnect and positive social feedback is expected from peers, socially excluded participants favor products that signal to their peers that they too are concerned about environmental issues. In addition to its contributions to consumer research and marketing, this work provides several practical implications. For instance, as established in this study, green products by default are not perceived by excluded individuals as tools that facilitate social reconnection. However, when such products are positioned properly, such individuals tend to capitalize on the social acceptability of their behavior to help them fulfill their threatened need for affiliation. The implication here is that marketers should attempt to customize their promotional strategies accordingly and direct the consumer’s attention to this covert benefit of green products.

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