ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

People are likely to use more hand sanitiser than they need when sharing a dispenser with strangers, according to a study.

And many of us appear to believe that a communal product will be less effective than a sanitiser bottle that we share with friends.

These were the conclusions reached in a study published in the Journal of Marketing Research. It revealed that consumers tend to overuse shared sanitisers when they are anonymously placed in a public area.

Marketing professor at the University of California Riverside Thomas Kramer and his co-authors looked at people's behaviour when confronted with products such as hand santiser dispensers at gyms, campuses and libraries, as well as shampoo and body washes housed in containers in hotel en suite showers.

"Most of the studies show that people believe the product is less efficacious, meaning it doesn't work as well, when they share it with strangers rather than friends," said Kramer. "Then in some studies, it shows that it actually leads them to use more to make up for that perceived low efficacy."

The research looked at various means of reducing the overuse of hand sanitisers. "One way to reduce wasteful use is by making consumers think they're not sharing with strangers, but with family or friends," said Kramer. "The second way is by increasing a person's identification with the product, even when it is shared out."

He said branding santiser dispensers with a company or college logo could help to discourage people from using too much.