Who Cares About Product Sustainability Information at the Moment of Purchase? Consumer Evidence from Three Countries

Abstract

Sustainable consumption is a crucial contributor to sustainable development. Often, environmental policy approaches to promote sustainable consumption rely on increasing the awareness of consumers through information provision. Hence, it is important to know what kind of people the sustainability information is likely to reach, and what kind of people would need to be reached by other means in order to green their consumption. We advance the question of the characteristics of consumers who look for information about sustainability when making grocery purchasing choices. We focus on value‐based buying behaviour of Millennials, drawing from consumer surveys carried out in Finland, Hong Kong and Spain. The results show that values differ between the studied nationalities, but when modelling how values affect the pro‐responsibility behaviour the effect of nationality vanishes. Also, high perception of one's own sustainability related behaviour seems to enable altruistic, self‐directed people to act on environmental concern. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Improving sustainable development and firm performance in emerging economies by implementing green supply chain activities

“…Pressures from customers and downstream foreign enterprises are especially acute: pushing Pakistani textile firms to self‐regulate themselves on a more urgent footing. According to Pekkanen, Pätäri, Albadera, and Jantunen () due to an overall upsurge in consumer demand, firms today alleviate their commitment to environmental issues, pro‐sustainability attitudes and ecological concerns for more sustainable products. Therefore, such kind of consumer behavior and demand might encourage sustainability transition in organizations (Pekkanen et al, ).…”

“…It has long been regarded that a competition does not influence deterioration or improvement of the firm's outcome, but these days' customers may take a decision to change their suppliers due to fierce competitive situation (Cadogan, Cui, & Kwok Yeung Li, 2003). This aspect of competitiveness implies that coping up with the requirements of customers and being market responsive is the only way to survive successfully in the competitive market (Murray, Gao, & Kotabe, 2011).…”

How green is your packaging—A comparative international study of cues consumers use to recognize environmentally friendly packaging

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Institutions and Agency in the Sustainability of Day-to-Day Consumption Practices: An Institutional Ethnographic Study

“…People who self-claim to have pro-sustainability values and attitudes do not necessarily act accordingly. Second, there are people who do not receive this targeted information, or who might not care to act on it even if they were aware of this information content (Pekkanen et al 2018). The question arises of whether it would ever be possible both to make everyone aware and to make everyone act upon this awareness towards sustainable choices.…”

“…All of the informants were academic adults, aged 22 to 37, with either a university or college degree, or university studies under way. Educated, young individuals in an industrialised country constitute an interesting focus group from a policy perspective that emphasises the education of consumers and choice editing: these potentially highly eco-literate, environmentally aware, and often pro-responsibility people are those that are likely to be interested in sustainability-related information and to look for it when making purchases (Pekkanen et al 2018). Although the market segmentation literature does not entirely agree on the characteristics of a potential green consumer (Laroche et al 2001), the selected group of informants, based on the demographics, is likely to fall within the category of consumers with a propensity for proenvironmental action (Inglehart 1995;Marquart-Pyatt 2008).…”