Just as a salad option on a menu increases the inci­dence of unhealthy orders, and national park vis­i­tors are less likely to sup­port con­ser­va­tion char­i­ties later in life (as com­pared to hik­ers or back­pack­ers), now buy­ing green has been shown to increase bad behaviour.

It’s not all bad, though: merely being exposed to green prod­ucts increases altru­is­tic behaviour—it’s pur­chas­ing said prod­ucts that is shown to increase bad behav­iour such as cheat­ing and steal­ing.

From the paper’s Abstract:

Con­sumer choices not only reflect price and qual­ity pref­er­ences but also social and moral val­ues as wit­nessed in the remark­able growth of the global mar­ket for organic and envi­ron­men­tally friendly prod­ucts. Build­ing on recent research on behav­ioral prim­ing and moral reg­u­la­tion, we find that mere expo­sure to green prod­ucts and the pur­chase of them lead to markedly dif­fer­ent behav­ioral con­se­quences. In line with the halo asso­ci­ated with green con­sumerism, peo­ple act more altru­is­ti­cally after mere expo­sure to green than con­ven­tional prod­ucts. How­ever, peo­ple act less altru­is­ti­cally and are more likely to cheat and steal after pur­chas­ing green prod­ucts as opposed to con­ven­tional prod­ucts. Together, the stud­ies show that con­sump­tion is more tightly con­nected to our social and eth­i­cal behav­iors in direc­tions and domains other than pre­vi­ously thought.