Now more than ever, people are trying to “go green” by buying products that are label as “eco-friendly.” However, it has been found now that many of those labels are misleading and/or provide false information. In fact, companies may be purposely misleading their customers because they see “gold” in making people believe that they are actually helping the environment. They also try to create confusion with fuzzy lingo and even more skeptical results and expects.

This article made me think of information cascades because many times, when a study is done, they would have many expects that basically say the same thing. However, we shouldn’t always trust their results on a study because after about 3 expects, those expects could just be “going along” with what the other ones said. Furthermore, the more expects on a claim doesn’t actually offer that much more information or reassurance. In fact, it is almost like the public has been incorrectly conditioned to think that just because major companies say something is true, then it must be the case. The is the reason why many companies have been able to fool the public into the buying their so called eco-friendly product.

To stop this trend, people should really take a look at what they are buying and be catious about what the eco-friendly market is actually saying. If people are a little more careful, maybe they could bring an end to being tricked by an information cascade.

The article discussed in this article can be found here: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/CollegeAndFamily/RaiseKids/AreGreenProductsReallyGreen.aspx