Green consumption practices for sustainability: an exploration through social practice theory
With growing environmental awareness, green consumers are environmentally conscious individuals who seek to consume products and demonstrate green consumption processes with minimal environmental impact. As a result, organisations have started differentiating their products by highlighting green attributes through green marketing communications. However, many consumers fail to translate their positive environmental values, attitudes, and intentions into green purchasing behaviour and other pro-environmental behaviour. This also creates a challenge for researchers to close the attitude-behaviour gap, which is the gap between what consumers say they will do and what they actually do.
Addressing this, this study explores the facilitators and barriers to green consumption processes of household products, from the consumer’s perspective within their socially constructed environment, beyond linear decision models (theory of reasoned action and theory of planned behaviour). It draws on social practice theory to focus on social practices that consumers undertake and inconspicuous consumption they go through, rather than on the decision-making moments.
Method and sample
20 semi-structured in-depth interviews, lasting between 45-60 minutes each, were conducted over a two-month period to interpret meaning from the experiences of individuals and explore enablers and barriers to green consumption processes. Participants, aged from 20 to over 69 years and resided in the same large metropolitan city in Australia, were recruited using a snowball, purposive sampling technique, and data were collected until data saturation was reached. Interview questions were designed to obtain information about participants’ perceptions and attitudes towards consuming and disposing of products and their understanding of green consumption processes.
All interviews were audio taped and then transcribed for analysis and interpretation. After data was sorted and coded using NVivo 11, categories and themes were identified through thematic content analysis. From 25 descriptive categories identified from the interviews, six themes emerged: (1) interpreting green marketing communications, (2) interpretation of everyday green consumption efforts, (3) motivations toward green consumption, (4) social influences on their green consumption, (5) barriers on their green consumption, and (6) work-life balance. These categories were reordered into four key classifications for analytical interpretation: (1) scepticism of green marketing communication; (2) power and meaning of green symbols; (3) consciousness driving green understandings; and (4) interpretations, influences, and motivations from information sources.
Key findings
- Some participants expressed scepticism and concerns that they were being deceived by organisations. Product labels were found to help consumers understand the product’s function, usage, and reasons to engage in green consumption processes, as well as to differentiate organisations with sound credentials from those that are simply green washing. Nevertheless, some reported difficulties in understanding all the information on the label and scepticism about the environmental claims presented in the product labelling.
- Using consistent “green” symbols, for example, the arrows from the recyclable symbol, words such as “eco”, and colours such as greens and earth browns, can help clarify what the organisation’s green credentials mean and drive consumers’ purchase behaviours. However, important green marketing communications tools, such as logos, are not strongly positioned in the participants’ minds or evoked set.
- Results revealed that an individual’s environmental awareness drives their comprehension of their green consumption processes. Some participants already developed an awareness and understanding of their green consumption efforts before current green marketing trends emerge. This awareness was developed through learned green mental routines and past behaviours when they were younger, which have become their personal norms and moral standards. Participants have also positively impacted their children’s level of awareness and understandings of green consumption processes.
- Participants have trouble displaying consistent green consumption processes because they are uncertain about what green consumption is. Despite organisations’ efforts to educate consumers about their products’ green attributes, consumers still struggle to distinguish which products are in fact “green”. This may be attributed to a lack of green information and branding on the product label. Similarly, although participants see recycling as one main example of their everyday green consumption process, they indicated a lack of knowledge in a lot of areas around recycling.
Recommendations
These findings have practical implications for marketers, governments, and policymakers to develop programs that enhance green consumption processes. Although information about sustainability is important for overcoming perceived barriers to green consumption processes, current green branding is not fully recognised and used in green marketing communications and consumers are still sceptical about the product labels and organisations’ delivery of their environmental promises. This indicates the need for further regulation and policy developments around product labels and educating consumers about how to interpret labels, which should happen at a broader level beyond the organisations to create transparency in the industry and to ensure consistency between the organisations.
Moreover, the green behaviours, such as post-consumption recycling, that consumers identified were often not translated into actions. To drive consumers’ decision to adopt pro-environmental behaviours, facilities for recycling should be made readily available within communities, with suitable information on both the product label and in marketing communications about what can be recycled and how.
Limitations in consumer knowledge can also be mitigated by communicating transparency in green marketing. For instance, the “green” grading of products and their parent organisations, similar to the health star ratings of pre-packaged food in Canada, France and Australia, could be used to make it easier for consumers to easily identify more environmentally friendly products and lessen the cognitive load at the point of purchase and post-consumption disposal. These star ratings, consistent across products in each of these countries and are mandated by government, can remove scepticism and make it easier for consumers to make informed choices.
Researchers
More information
The research article is also available on eprints.