Much attention has been given to how we can make consumption more responsible—better for the planet and society. However, research on the associations between consumer purchasing behavior and their psychological concern for health, the environment and ethics lacks consensus on the significance and directionality of these concerns. This study aims to examine how (relatively) important these concerns are in determining consumer purchasing behavior. Systematic searches were conducted in PubMed, EconLit, Web of Science and Scopus databases from 2000 to 2020. Results were summarized through narrative synthesis of the evidence and meta-analysis. The meta-analysis revealed a significant positive correlation between health, environmental and ethical concerns and purchasing behavior, indicating that changes in health, environmental and ethical concerns will result in a consistent shift in purchase behavior towards choices consistent with the concern. This association is susceptible to moderating factors including types of products (food, non-food and non-specific products) and country’s level of economic development. In addition, the health, environmental and ethical concerns appear to have a weaker impact on the actual purchase behavior than on purchase intention, suggesting that interventions should focus on translating these “purchasing intentions” into actual purchasing behaviors. Narrative review of the studies that were not subject to meta-analysis showed good agreement, with almost all relationships reported having the same direction as those indicated by the meta-analysis. Overall, this study suggests that there is substantial potential for marketing strategies aimed at encouraging pro-health, pro-environment and ethical purchasing behaviors.
Earth’s critical zone is the physical layer contained between the top of the vegetation canopy and the depth of the circulating groundwater below the land surface. The critical zone is defined within the study of Earth natural sciences as the unique terrestrial biophysical system that supplies most life-sustaining resources for humans. A feature of this specific physical system that is defined by geographical locale is the interactions of people with the vertically-connected biophysical flows and transformations (energy, material, biodiversity) that contribute to human welfare by delivering, both directly and indirectly, critical zone services to humankind. We have characterized these interactions by considering the full extent of the critical zone through the application of economic valuation methods. We estimated the current economic value of 14 critical zone services for 5 biophysical components of Earth’s critical zone, based on data collected from the Zhangxi catchment of Ningbo city located in the Yangtze River Delta region of China and from several additional published studies. For the full vertical extent of Earth’s critical zone bounded by the Zhangxi catchment, the value, most of which is outside the market, was estimated to be USD 116 million in 2018. Valuation of goods and services was delineated for benefits arising from key components of the critical zone physical system. The estimated value of the atmospheric component of Earth’s critical zone was USD 5 million; the vegetation component value was USD 96 million; the soil component value was USD 8 million; the surface water component value was USD 5 million; and the groundwater component value was USD 2 million. Because of the nature of the uncertainties and lack of data for the full range of identified services, these values are considered a minimum estimate. Gross domestic product in the Zhangxi catchment was around USD 431 million in 2018. These results illustrate, for one location, the range of services that arise when considering the full depth of Earth’s critical zone, the data needs for valuing this range of services, and the conceptual and potential methodological advances, and the challenges, that exist at the disciplinary interface between Earth natural sciences and applied economics.
There is a strong association between urban prosperity and human resources. Rapid urbanization and industrialization have caused severe air pollution to the urban cities over the past decades, and permanently moving to locations with clean air has been considered to be one of the most effective strategies to avoid air pollution. However, whether this is in fact still unclear. In order to fill the research gaps, this study combines individual-level data derived from a national survey and city-level data obtained from various sources to empirically exam the effect that air quality has on settlement decisions of urban floating migrants in China. We focus on the target floating migrants who have urban hukou in the origin city and housing in the destination city, and investigate the relationship between air quality and settlement decisions from the move-in and move-out city perspective. In addition, we exam not only the willingness of urban floating migrants to settling in the move-in city, but also their actual migration decision in the reality. The bivariate probit analysis and panel data regression are applied. Results show that poor air quality in the move-out cities has a significant positive impact on urban floating migrants’ willingness to settling in the move-in cities, while bad air quality in the move-in cities has a significant negative impact, indicating that poor air quality does act as a push force to drive floating migrants away but good air quality can be a pulling force for floating migrants to settling down. In addition, the robust tests show good agreement with the main regression results, with almost all relationships reported having the same direction as those indicated by the regression analysis. Our findings can help policy makers and urban planners assess and design interventions to improve the urban air quality aimed at attracting talent, with broader implications for urban sustainable development.
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