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Introduction
Although the firm's interaction with the natural environment has been an issue of interest for economists, sociologists, and psychologists for a long time, it was not until the late 1960s that it was included in the research agendas of marketing and management scholars. Stricter environment regulations, stakeholder pollution concerns, and growing public pressures were among the forces that contributed to the emergence of a new line of academic inquiry, focusing on the effects that marketing/management practices had on the environment, and how this in turn influences them. At first, marketing, and management were criticized as being incompatible with green issues, because of proposing methods, and approaches that satisfied consumer needs and maximized business profits at the expense of the environment ([106] Levy and Zaltman, 1975; [130] Peattie, 1995; [161] Van Dam and Apeldoorn, 1996). Nowadays, however, both are considered an integral part of providing solutions to environmental problems, through, for example, the promotion of green consumer lifestyles, the cultivation of an ecological spirit among employees, and the dissemination of information about environmentally friendly practices.
Initial writing on the subject came from [100] Kotler and Levy (1969), who first introduced the concept of societal marketing management. Their pioneering article subsequently stimulated research attention on environmental issues, focusing on such topics as "societal marketing" ([103] Lavidge, 1970; [60] El-Ansary, 1974; [160] Takas, 1974), "social responsibility and marketing" ([101] Kotler and Zaltman, 1971; [53] Davis, 1973), "responsible consumption" ([63] Fisk, 1973), "ecologically concerned consumers" ([96] Kinnear et al. , 1974), "ecological marketing strategy" ([86] Kassarjian, 1971), "ecological concerns on brand perceptions" ([95] Kinnear and Taylor, 1973), and "environmental movement" ([104] Leathers, 1972). Most of these efforts were trying to address criticisms made about the moral role of marketing in society, and contributed towards altering the general marketing definition to reflect greater sensitivity to environmental issues ([44] Crane and Desmond, 2002).
Despite this initial mobilization of scholars in the field, surprisingly the execution of studies with an environmental focus remained at relatively sporadic levels for a relatively long time. The intensification of government, public, and company concern in protecting the environment in the 1990s was responsible for the exponential growth of the discipline, which continues relentlessly up until the present day ([120] Menon and Menon, 1997; [13] Banerjee,...