Sustainable Millennials:
Attitudes towards Sustainability
and the Material Effects
of Interactive Technologies
Kristin
Hanks, William Odom, David Roedl, & Eli Blevis
School of
Informatics, Indiana University at Bloomington, Indiana USA
{khanks,wodom,droedl,eblevis}@indiana.edu
The concept of sustainability
refers to the viability
of our collective future and
includes issues of social equity, public health and wellness, and ecological
stability.
Sustainable
Consumption: Green Consumer
Behaviour
when Purchasing Products
William
Young, Kumju
Hwang, Seonaidh
McDonald and Caroline J. Oates
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sd.394/epdf
ABSTRACT
The ‘attitude–behaviour gap’ or ‘values–action gap’ is where
30% of consumers report that they are very concerned about environmental issues
but they are struggling to translate this into purchases. For example, the
market share for ethical foods remains at 5 per cent of sales. This paper
investigates the purchasing process for green consumers in relation to consumer
technology products in the UK. Data were collected from 81 self-declared green
consumers through in depth interviews on recent purchases of technology
products. A green consumer purchasing model and success criteria for closing
the gap between green consumers’ values and their behaviour are developed. The
paper concludes that incentives and single issue labels (like the current
energy rating label) would help consumers concen-trate their limited efforts.
More fundamentally, ‘being green’ needs time and space in people’s lives that
is not available in increasingly busy lifestyles. Implications for policy and
business are proposed. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP
Environment.
EVERY TIME SOMEONE MAKES A DECISION ABOUT WHETHER (OR NOT)
TO PURCHASE A PRODUCT OR SERVICE THERE IS the potential for that decision to
contribute to a more or less sustainable pattern of consumption. Each purchase
has ethical, resource, waste and community impact implications. When
individuals consider the adoption of sustainable lifestyles, they engage with
an increasingly complex decision-making process. These everyday decisions on
practical environmental or ethical solutions often result in trade-offs between
conflicting issues and result in a ‘motivational and practical complexity of
green consumption’ (Moisander, 2007, p. 404).
Analysing why green values have a weaker influence on the
decision making process when actually purchasing a product is vital in
understanding and changing consumer behaviour towards sustainable consumption.
According to Biel and Dahlstrand (2005), Sener and Hazer (2008) and Wheale and
Hinton (2007), this could be down to
• brand strength,
• culture,
• demographic
characteristics,
• finance,
• habit,
• lack of information,
• lifestyles,
•
personalities or
• trading off between
different ethical factors.
Chatzidakis et al. (2007) argue that consumers use
neutralization techniques to justify pursuing their more selfish goals instead
of purchasing fair trade products in the UK. Biel and Dahlstrand (2005) show
(see Table 1) that this may also be due to the relative cognitive effort
required in buying a product based on values. The context of the purchase is
important, including demographic, social, political, economic and psychological
factors as well as temporal and ideological structuring of domestic practices
(Hand et al., 2007). In addition, Williams and Dair (2007) argue that without
changes to the built environment some sustainable behaviour cannot take place.
Lack of time influenced interviewees’ to exclude criteria
that are more time consuming to research, such as the details of a company’s
corporate social responsibility programme.
Lack of time for research, decision-making and the purchase
was the first of five main barriers for our interviewees for purchasing greener
products.
For our green consumers the third major barrier was the lack
of available information on the environmental and social performance of
products and manufacturers, as opposed to lack of time to find the information
in the first barrier.
Interviewees knew the environmental impacts of the products
they were purchasing but a few found that the eco-efficiency consumer approach
was not far reaching enough. These few tried to avoid electronics products because
the environmental and social problems were so great. Many were also
anti-multinational brands and companies and tried to buy from local or small
retailers and companies.
The purchase made by the green consumer (using the factors
discussed) is different each time. The purchase experience and knowledge gained
from each purchase process (as well as the guilt from not purchasing the
greenest product) are fed back into the consumer’s general green values and
knowledge, which influences the next purchase.With knowledge of the general
purchasing process of green consumers, the key factors that will help green
consumers purchase a more ethical technology product are
(1) the consumer’s
green value is strong;
(2) the consumer has
purchase experience;
(3) the consumer has
plenty of time for research and decision-making;
(4) s/he has good
knowledge of the relevant environmental issues;
(5) green products
are reasonably available and
(6) the consumer can
afford and is prepared for the financial costs.
For our green consumers the third major barrier was the lack of available information on the environmental
and social performance of products and manufacturers, as opposed to lack of time to fi nd the information in the
fi rst barrier.
For our green consumers the third major barrier was the lack of available information on the environmental
and social performance of products and manufacturers, as opposed to lack of time to fi nd the information in the
fi rst barrier.
Measuring Knowledge,
Attitudes and Behaviours towards Sustainable Development: Two Exploratory
Studies
Dr. Alex C. Michalos, Heather Creech, Dr. Christina McDonald, Manitoba Education, P. Maurine
https://www.iisd.org/pdf/2009/measuring_knowledge_sd.pdf
The overall goal of the Decade for Education for Sustainable
Development is to integrate the values inherent in sustainable development into
all aspects of learning to encourage changes in behaviour that allow for a more
sustainable and just society for all.1
Leading a
Sustainable Lifestyle in a ‘Non-Sustainable World’
Reflections from
Australian Ecovillage and Suburban Residents
EVONNE MILLER AND KRISTEEN
BENTLEY
The 21st century is frequently described as the ‘era of
sustainability’, with increasing global awareness about the importance of
addressing climate change and reducing greenhouse gas emissions (United Nations
2007). Internationally, and within Australia, numerous initiatives and
education programs have been designed to encourage people to change their
behaviours, to make better environmental choices and ecologically sustainable
lifestyle decisions in terms of housing, energy and water consumption and
transportation (e.g., Miller et al. 2009). Yet, to date, leading a sus-
tainable life is not a mainstream concept. For example, although over
three-quarters (82 per cent) of Australian adults state they were concerned
about environmental issues, only a third (34 per cent) report some form of
environmental involvement (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2010). Whilst a
large body of literature has explored the wide array of internal (i.e., values,
knowledge, experience, feelings, personality traits) and external (i.e., social
norms, infrastructure, cost) factors that influence whether people behave
sustainably or not (e.g., Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002; McKenzie Mohr 2001; Stern
2000; Schultz and Zelezny 1998; Whitmarsh and O’Neill 2010), much less is known
about the experiences of those who choose to lead extremely sustainable lives.
This paper explores the motivations, viewpoints and experiences of a small
sample of sustainability leaders from south-east Queensland, Australia.
WHO ARE SUSTAINABILITY LEADERS?
Although leadership can take many forms, it has been
proposed that anyone who takes responsibility for understanding and acting on
sustainability challenges quali- fies as a ‘sustainability leader’, whether or
not they hold a formal leadership position (Ferdig 2007). To date, whilst an
emerging body of literature is exploring sustainability leadership in
corporate organisations (e.g., Fenwick 2007; Quinn and Norton 2004), little is
known about the motivations and actions of individual sustainability leaders in
the wider community who consciously choose to live their lives in an
ecofriendly manner by accounting for, and minimising, their impact on the
planet. Research has typically focussed on the predictors of individual
pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours among the general community,
identifying feelings of environmental responsibility (Kaiser and Shimoda 1999)
and pro-environmental self-identity (Whitmarsh and O’Neill 2010) as key
predictors. In explaining non-activist environmentalism, researchers often
utilise Stern’s (2000) value-belief-norm model to explain how certain values
(e.g., altruism), beliefs (e.g., environmental responsibility) and personal
norms (e.g., sense of obligation) intertwine to influence whether peo- ple
undertake environmentally sustainable actions. Whilst these actions have been variously
operationalised—from recycling, water or energy conservation to sustain- able
housing and transport—they are commonly defined as ‘intentionally reducing the
negative impact that an action can have on the environment’ (Kollmuss and
Agyeman 2002).
Several studies have explored the actions and experiences of
sustainability leaders and activists, those who prioritise sustainability in
their daily life choices and may hold formal leadership roles in environmental
movements, demonstrations or initiatives (Seguin et al. 1998; Stern et al.
1999).
