‘Blame it on marketing’: consumers' views on unsustainable consumption

Abstract

This paper addresses consumers' attitudes towards consumption, the extent to which excessive consumption is perceived as an environmental problem and what consumers perceive as their personal responsibility vs. that of marketing for this consumption. Findings from a focus group and a survey administered to lecturers of a university in Portugal are reported. A critical reflection upon the findings reveals that participants view consumption as excessive and mostly due to marketing, but do not associate high levels of consumption with environmental damage. The consumers surveyed did not accept personal responsibility for excessive consumption, and many of them do not perceive their actions to have a significant impact on the environment. The high educational level of our sample makes these findings of particular concern. This paper feeds the debate on sustainable marketing and expresses the need to address consumers', as well as marketing's, place in sustainability. Implications of this study are drawn and directions for future research are suggested.

Overcoming the psychological barriers to energy conservation behaviour: The influence of objective and subjective environmental knowledge

“…The second part of the questionnaire consisted of 5‐point Likert scales (1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree) for the measurement of denial mechanisms, personal norm and subjective knowledge. Since no comprehensive instrument was found for measuring usage of psychological denial mechanism, scales were developed adopting items from various research (Alcock et al, ; Clark, Kotchen, & Moore, ; Dunlap, Liere, Mertig, & Jones, ; Ellen et al, ; Kaiser & Shimoda, ; Kilbourne, Beckmann, & Thelen, ; Mccright & Dunlap, ; Pereira Heath & Chatzidakis, ; Steg et al, ; Webster, ). Six items were adopted from previous studies (Steg et al, ; Zhang, Wang, & Zhou, ) to measure personal norms.…”

“…Consumers who deny the responsibility for causing degradation are prone to displace and diffuse the responsibility and accuses “others” of environmental destruction (Kollmus and Agyeman, ). They frequently blame the central and local government and politicians (Eckhardt, Belk, & Devinney, , Wells et al, ), business and industry (Lorenzoni et al, ; Wells et al, ), and other consumers (Pereira Heath & Chatzidakis, ) for the environmental pollution. Consequently, they don’t feel any personal responsibility for tackling degradation and wait for others to act before making sacrifices (Stoll‐Kleeman et al, ).…”

Exploring consumers’ purchase intention towards green products in an emerging market: The role of consumers’ perceived readiness

“…Studies indicate that environmental beliefs have had a significant impact on consumer behaviour (D'Souza, Taghian, & Khosla, ; Line & Hanks, ; Pereira Heath & Chatzidakis, ; Vitell & Muncy, ). A report shows that ethical spending continues to grow, despite difficult market conditions, with combined ethical money and ethical spending totals rising to US$111 billion in 2014 (Cooperative Group, ).…”

Consumers’ evaluations of the efficiency of actions to improve environmental quality: A comparative study between Brazil and China

“…EC is highly correlated with knowledge and proximity to problems caused by environmental degradation (Spence, Poortinga, & Pidgeon, ). However, denial of responsibility, that is, the transference of the responsibility to government or to the marketing system of large organizations (Pereira Heath & Chatzidakis, ), and skepticism with the economic system and the governmental authenticity of principles (Macnaghten, Grove‐White, Jacobs, & Wynne, ) are usual among consumers when deciding on their habits of consumption, and they can restrain EC.…”