Responsible Citizens and Sustainable Consumer Behavior

New Interpretive Frameworks

Pietro Lanzini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351400077
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Economia
• Subtopic: Sviluppo sostenibile

There is broad consensus on the need to shift to a new paradigm of lifestyles and economic development, given the un-sustainability of current patterns. Given this, research on consumer behavior is to play a crucial role in shedding light on the motives underpinning the adoption of responsible behaviors.

Stemming from a thorough discussion of existing approaches, this book argues that the perspective of analysis has to be modified. First, acknowledging that a profile of the responsible consumer does not exist since all of us can be more or less sustainable and environment-friendly: the sustainability of an individual should not be considered as given, being something dynamic that changes according to both subjective and contextual factors. Moreover, the book hypothesises that integrating dimensions and perspectives that have been so far overlooked by mainstream research will help deconstruct responsible behaviors adopting a flexible and holistic approach. Relevant policy implications are discussed, and empirical research on responsible behaviors is illustrated.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of consumer behavior, sustainable consumption, environmental psychology and environmental studies in general.

1 Introduction

New perspectives in consumer behavior

This book deals with the behavior of people in an age where environmental issues have gained center stage in the debate on the unsustainability of current lifestyles and economic development, advocating for the shift to a new paradigm. Environmental awareness is indeed experiencing an unprecedented boost: new interpretative frameworks on consumer behavior, new trends and analytical techniques emerging need to be systematized to provide a holistic, well-structured view of such a complex issue. Consequently, behavioral studies in the domain of sustainability are experiencing a steady evolution – rapid leaps follow one another, with the introduction of new variables and the development of innovative methods to increase the accuracy of existing models. To keep up-to-date in such a turbulent environment, the approach adopted is to consolidate the state of knowledge in order to benefit both from past advances and those that inevitably will take place in years to come. These advances will fine tune the predictive capacity of the proposed famework, rather than setting forth its obsolescence. Indeed, there is no clash between the scientific literature, which proceeds by micro-specialization, and the day-to-day practice, where the operative approach to the discipline requires some cornerstones on which to build a holistic vision. This book therefore represents a useful tool for scholars, practitioners as well as those lacking specific knowledge on the technicalities of the discipline.

Understanding behavior has always been a challenge, and many approaches have been proposed with differing degrees of interpretative potential (Jackson, 2005). In recent times, we observe, on the one hand, an increase in complexity due to the rise of new drivers behind behaviors; on the other hand, new tools are conceived and developed to interpret and predict human behavior, and specifically those behaviors that are relevant from the standpoint of sustainability. This assumes particular relevance in current times, as global challenges and issues leave the niche of academia to top the priority lists of policy-makers and businesses.

To add complexity to an intrinsically composite topic, when it comes to sustainability, consumer behavior attains a structure of values and beliefs challenging traditional patterns. In other words, the rules of the game are different.

This book has its roots in the acknowledgment of this evolving and complex scenario, where both traditional and new interpretative paradigms need to be integrated to provide a useful lens through which it is possible to gain deeper understanding of pro-environmental behaviors. The ramifications of this issue are multi-level, encompassing behaviors and their explanatory variables, but also the very categories that are adopted to address the problem.

Let’s consider intention and behavior: although interrelated, the two constructs are different and as such they should be disentangled and analyzed. The following example helps describe this intricacy, showing how intention and behavior affect different profiles (in different ways) in their daily activities.

A commuter goes to work using a bicycle and public transportation, as she feels it is important to promote the image of a successful person who cares for the environment. Then, at home and away from social pressures, she does not recycle nor does she pay attention to energy-saving or other environment-friendly activities. In another neighborhood lives a woman who has an interest in environmental issues and strong beliefs about how individuals should limit activities with detrimental impacts on nature. However, she does not buy eco-labeled products as she cannot afford to pay the premium price, and takes her two daughters to school every morning driving a second-hand, highly polluting car.

Different drivers, different contexts, different shades of green. And, as a consequence, challenging questions to be answered: to what extent can we be effective with respect to these profiles in order to consolidate pro-environmental behaviors? Who is more reactive to which policies? Decision-makers have a wide set of strategies to orient behaviors, ranging from awareness to functionality, from praise to economic incentives, and so on. The effectiveness of such strategies can be (and usually is) asymmetric between individuals. Therefore, understanding behavioral drivers is a crucial step in order to make behaviors converge towards the envisaged objective.

Decision-makers are particularly aware of the complexity of the framework shaping individual responses to policies, and such a framework will be discussed in detail in the following chapters. The long list of drivers determining behaviors is somehow expressive of the high complexity of the policy–behavior relationship. A far from exhaustive list includes attitudes, values, perceived control, habits and past routines, availability of feasible alternatives, convenience, problem awareness, mutual interrelations between behaviors, perceived social pressure, socio-demographic profiles, monetary and non-monetary inducements, and so on.

Such complexity impacts the effectiveness of common policy issues, such as, for instance, interventions to reduce car dependence so as to curb traffic congestion and related air pollution. In such situations, which are subjects of great interest to behavioral scholars, the range of alternatives that can be considered to improve mobility patterns within the community is very broad, in terms of both their nature and their investment requirements. Overlooking the importance of behavioral determinants means neglecting an important effectiveness factor, which results in under-performing investment and thus a possible, or rather probable, waste of resources.

We are therefore confronted with several behavioral determinants on the one hand and implementation options on the other. As there is no one-size-fits-all intervention that is effective for all individuals, policy-makers typically adopt a panel of interventions that target specific segments of the relevant population. Some groups might pay more attention to the financial dimension of alternative transport modes, so that congestion charges or convenient public transport tickets might be an effective strategy. Other groups might be less sensitive to monetary incentives and rather privilege social acknowledgment or innovation per se.

The same line of reasoning can be adapted to companies interested in shedding light on how actual or prospective customers develop purchasing decisions, what is the role played by the sustainability of the offer and how can a firm exploit such knowledge in order to implement sound strategies from the standpoint of differentiation, pricing, communication, and so on. For instance, foodstore chain managers will decide on the visibility and role in the product range of eco-labeled, organic products with respect to traditional food without eco-labels. Moreover, they have to set the price range according to customers’ willingness to pay for these two types of products. In this example, like in many others, decision-makers could benefit from a deeper knowledge of the drivers of responsible consumerism that help to take the most effective decisions.

Consumer behavior is interdisciplinary in nature, rating among the most-investigated issues within a broad range of fields including psychology, sociology, management and marketing. It emerged as a distinct field of study in the 1960s, and then developed through different stages.

Three traditional paradigms focus on the prevalence of a rational, behavioral or cognitive perspective and on the role of conscious and rational economic calculations, external environmental factors and information processing, respectively.

The rational perspective has its roots in the work of Adam Smith and Alfred Marshall, considering behaviors as the result of rational economic calculations where individuals act (e.g. purchase) in order to maximize their utility. Early studies mostly focused on purchasing behaviors, so that the main question to address was how consumers spent their available income evaluating the different alternatives that were available in the market.

The behavioral perspective, on the other hand, focuses on the role of external factors in our learning process. As the perspective shifts from the inside to the outside of consumers, there are relevant implications for business – marketing, advertising and, in general, all means of communicating and connecting with the consumer – which become key factors in orientating behaviors.

The cognitive perspective stresses the role of information processing as we pursue decision-making; individuals are problem solvers who are not blindly guided to purchase given products by specific advertising campaigns, as they actively seek, process and use available information to develop an educated choice.

These paradigms mainly focus on purchasing behaviors; indeed, the term itself consumer behavior clearly refers to activities connected with consumption. Since we are interested in the domain of sustainable behaviors, we need to broaden the scope of analysis so as to include activities that are not (directly) connected with purchases. In other words, we need to consider behavioral models that cross the boundaries of consumption and are able to explain how individuals develop behavioral choices in a wide range of domains.

The theories of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980, Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975) and of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991), which represent, in their original formulations, expectancy value models of decision-making rooted in theories of rational choice, did not develop in the specific field of environmental behavior, but proved to be useful in investigating the domain of sustainability. In response to growing findings of a weak correlation between attitude measures and later behaviors in attitude–behavior research, the theory of reasoned action suggests that attitudes (the personal desirability of a behavior) and subjective norms (representing social pressure) are the antecedents of behavioral intentions, which, in turn, mediate their impact and are the best predictors of behavior. Individuals are considered as rational beings processing available information to develop a conscious intention to act. However, in real life, many behaviors are not completely under volitional control, as both internal (skills, knowledge) and external (resources, facilitating conditions) factors play a role in shaping the likelihood of performing a given behavior. The theory of planned behavior is proposed as an extension of the theory of reasoned action which adds a third antecedent of behavioral intentions: the perceived behavioral control, representing the perceptions of how difficult or easy it is to perform a behavior.

Consumer behavior in the age of sustainability

Over the past 30 years, unprecedented attention has been devoted to the specifics of pro-environmental behavior and its drivers, given the relevance that sustainability has for policy-makers, businesses and society at large. Many factors contributed to this, ranging from anthropogenic disasters to sky-rocketing pollution, and from a growing awareness among consumers to demographic explosion. Catastrophes connected to the natural environment have occurred since the appearance of mankind (earthquakes, floods and fires), as did natural phenomena on large scale that heavily affected life on Earth (e.g. the ice ages). Moreover, mankind has always used technological advances to bring destruction in times of war and conflict, building and deploying powerful weapons. However, it is especially from the 1980s that catastrophic peacetime accidents directly connected with human activities (the Bhopal disaster in 1984 or Chernobyl in 1986) generated awareness of the limits that need to be put to economic activities (stringent safety regulations, prevention policies, pollution control).¹ It is no coincidence that this period witnessed some of the milestones for sustainability, such as the Vienna Convention on ozone layer (1985), the definition itself of sustainable development, known as the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987), Agenda21 (1991) or the Earth Summit in Rio (1992).

As regards environmental degradation, post-industrialization pollution (from air and water pollution to acid rain, from the shrinking ozone layer to loss of biodiversity, and so on) reached unprecedented levels. While the list of the consequences of pollution and human activities is long, it here suffices to highlight that impacts are both local and global. A typical local manifestation is represented by emissions lowering air quality in large metropolitan areas affected by heavy traffic or large-scale industrial activity, with dangerous consequences for human health. On a global scale, pollution is causing the ozone layer to shrink and the climate itself to change: temperatures on the Earth vary (typically increase) at an accelerating pace, so that ice melts in Antarctica and Greenland, sea levels rise causing flooding, and extreme weather conditions become more and more frequent. Some figures can better illustrate the magnitude of these effects. Since 1900, carbon dioxide emissions have increased a shocking twenty-fold (and similar figures also apply to other polluting substances emitted into the atmosphere): the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now around 400 ppm (parts per million), and most simulations suggest that reaching the 450 ppm threshold would mean an increase of average temperature on the Earth of around 2°C. Deforestation is another crucial aspect of the impact of human activity on the environment, causing biodiversity loss, desertification, greenhouse effect and decrease in the carbon dioxide absorbed: since the 1990s, although the pace of deforestation seems to be slowing, we have lost between five to eight million (some say much more) hectares of forest each year. As regards the melting of the ice at the poles, every year 350 billion tons are lost, resulting in an 11 mm increase in sea levels since 1992. If the trend does not change, it is likely that salinity of the oceans will be altered, with catastrophic effects on weather patterns and sea organisms. Pollution and environmental degradation go hand-in-hand with the rapid demographic growth that has occurred in recent times, which, coupled with the affluence of lifestyles in modern societies, puts on a strain the stock of natural resources. The demographic issue is nothing new: Malthus (1766–1834) raised the question about the consequences of a population growing faster than resource availability in the late eighteenth century, at a time when global population was less than a billion. Population growth remained constant until 1900 (around 1.5 billion people), to explode during the twentieth century reaching 7.5 billion at present, with all projections agreeing on the trend to continue in the twenty-first century.

The complexity of the environmental degradation issue is reflected by the number of actors that are asked to play a role in shifting to a new, more sustainable paradigm: while business, policy-makers and citizens play a prominent role, the relevance of other players (from investors to non-government organizations (NGOs), from traditional media to the web, and so on) should not be underestimated. Firms need to change their overall approach to production processes and the way they do business, integrating environmental and social needs with the traditional economic dimension. While, until recently, most companies focused on the costs associated with cleaner production processes, adopting an end-of-pipe approach to comply with environmental regulations, they are now starting to see the business case for sustainability, and to consider the latter as a source of competitive advantage which must be managed proactively and pervasively. Policy-makers play an active role not only by setting standards and regulations to guide with a top-down approach the behaviors of citizens and firms. They are now adopting a cooperative approach, acting alongside other economic actors to provide them with the contextual conditions that facilitate the adoption of beneficial behaviors. Let’s consider the case of urban congestion: traditional instruments such as congestion charges or so-called ecological days (where specific areas are closed to private cars) are still in use, yet being flanked and gradually substituted by other instruments. SUMPs (sustainable urban mobility plans) represent an example of public policy aimed at providing the contextual conditions for citizens to choose environment friendly transport modes because they prefer to do so (more convenient, enjoyable, etc) rather...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• 1 Introduction
• 2 From green consumers to responsible citizens
• 3 The trap of behavioral patterns: the role of habits
• 4 Praise or money? Rewards’ effectiveness in shaping behaviors
• 5 How behaviors are interrelated: the spillover effect
• 6 A framework for understanding responsible citizens’ behavior
• 7 From theory to practice: a real-life intervention study
• Index