Colored vs. Black Screens or How Color Can Favor Green e-Commerce

This paper presents the results of an exploratory qualitative study conducted with 26 consumers about their use of computer screen savers. The results show how the use of screen savers remains almost nonexistent. Unknown or taking too long to apply, this feature is not attractive to persons interviewed who do not use it for sustainable development purposes. The paper presents the results of this qualitative study, offering an interpretive analysis of the reasons and factors explaining this type of computer user’s behavior. The paper also discusses the potential of using screensaver functionality in e-commerce websites, particularly in the Mediterranean region. In this direction it looks into how this could be provided by the establishment of two elements - a browser and a website extension, which will be tested in a future online experiment.