This study aims to examine how these factors—egoistic and altruistic values and social consumption motivation-stimulus factors—influence sustainable consumption behaviour (response factor), the ...mediating role of pro-environmental self-identity and attitude (organism factor), and the moderating effect of environmental protection emotion. We used the stimulus organism response theory to gain a solid and holistic understanding of the concept. We collected 328 original surveys from Indian customers who recently purchased sustainable products via convenience and purposive sampling, and we analysed the data by using structural equation modelling. Intriguingly, the results show that (a) stimulus factors, such as egoistic and altruistic values and social consumption motivation, had a positive influence on pro-environment self-identity and attitude and sustainable consumption behaviour; (b) pro-environment self-identity had a positive effect on attitude; (c) mediation factors (pro-environment self-identity and attitude) had a significantly positive mediation relationship between stimulus and response factors; and (d) environmental protection emotion significantly moderated the relationship between stimulus, organism factors, and response factors. The study contributes to the current body of knowledge in the area of sustainable marketing by examining the rapidly growing phenomenon of sustainable consumer behaviour.
•Egoistic/altruistic values influence sustainable consumption behaviour.•Pro-environmental self-identity and attitude play a significant mediating role.•Environmental protection emotion plays a remarkable moderating effect.•We use the stimulus organism response theory to gain a solid and holistic understanding of the relations.•The study provides with a strong rationale for increasing sustainable marketing efforts.
The paper examines the sustainable consumption behavior of two emerging countries, China and India. The conceptual framework incorporates egoistic value, social consumption motivation, altruistic ...values (stimulus factors), pro‐environmental self‐identity, attitude (mediators and organism factors), sustainable consumption behavior (response factor), and environmental protection emotion as a moderating factor, using stimulus‐organism‐response theory. We collected 658 original survey data from China (n = 337) and Indian (n = 321) customers via convenience and purposive sampling methods and analyzed the data with structural equation modeling. Intriguingly, the results show that (a) stimulus factors such as egoistic and altruistic values and social consumption motivation had a positive influence on pro‐environment self‐identity and attitude and sustainable consumption behavior in both countries, (b) pro‐environment self‐identity had a positive effect on the attitude of both countries' consumers (c) while mediation factors (pro‐environment self‐identity and attitude) had a significantly positive mediation relationship between stimulus and response factors, and (d) environmental protection emotion significantly moderated the relationship between stimulus, organism factors, and response factors of two countries. The study contributes to the current body of knowledge in sustainable marketing by examining the rapidly growing phenomenon of sustainable consumer behavior in two Asian countries.
Global teen population constitutes a sizable market in the luxury brands industry. However, little is known about the mechanism through which teens form an attitude towards luxury brands, ...particularly in the context of emerging economies. Drawing insights from self-concept theory, self-discrepancy theory, and social consumption motivation, our study proposes a theoretical framework to explain how teenagers' self-related perception influence social consumption motives through avoidance-related indecisiveness, thereby determining teenagers' attitude towards luxury brands. Using a sample of 610 affluent private school students across five major cities of India, we empirically validate our theoretical framework through structural equation modelling. Our study contributes to the existing literature by demonstrating the impact of teenagers’ self-perception on the display of avoidance-related indecisiveness and resisting social consumption motives of luxury brand purchases.
As people share more of their lives on social media, their consumption and purchase behaviors become increasingly visible to their peers, spawning a new form of digitally enabled conspicuous ...consumption. We examine how the ensuing dynamics of social commerce affect these visibility choices. We use data from a platform dedicated exclusively to facilitating the display of verified online and offline purchases with optional product commentaries. We use fixed effects and matching techniques to control for endogeneity in commentary and consumer disclosure, while embedding a new text-based model of product similarity into our econometric analysis and capturing product complementarity using network-based measures of similarity. Our findings demonstrate that disclosed purchase patterns are shaped by other users, even those with whom the discloser has no previously stated relationship. We find that the source of attention shapes disclosure behavior, and we uncover a relationship between comments and purchase similarity of disclosed purchases, suggesting that consumers play to the crowd. The negative relationship between product reviews and purchase disclosure suggest that consumers may disclose a purchase because of a relationship with that particular item and not a desire to habitually reveal purchases. Our results shed new light on the distinction between digital visibility and social buzz, with managerial implications for retailers and social media platforms that support social consumption.
In this paper, we respond to the call for more holistic and culturally diverse research to advance understanding of (non)sustainable consumption behaviour. Our conceptual model incorporates ...materialism, environmental concern, social consumption motivation, pro-environmental self-identity and sustainable consumption behaviours. This paper contributes to knowledge by examining the mediating role of pro-environmental self-identity to more fully explain consumers' (non)sustainable consumption behaviour. An international online panel survey was employed in the UK (n = 1037) and China (n = 1025). Findings show that pro-environmental self-identity partially or fully mediates the relationships between materialism, environmental concern, social consumption motivation and sustainable consumption behaviours. Important cultural differences also emerged, for example, the positive effect of materialism on Chinese consumer's sustainable consumption, which is contrary to Western evidence. We suggest bolder, culturally informed and more reflexive marketing strategies are needed to significantly advance sustainable consumption, thus effectively helping to redress the crisis facing our planet.
This paper proposes and critiques the idea of a post-capitalism sustainable consumption utopia to improve the ecological and human wellbeing of the planet. Such a notion can stimulate new imaginative ...thinking on a future sustainable world not dominated by neoliberalism. It can also strengthen SDG-12: responsible consumption and production. To do so, it examines the influence of pro-environmental self-identity, market-based barriers, and knowledge barriers on sustainable consumption buying, product lifetime extension, and environmental activism. Survey data was collected via online panels in Sweden (n=504) and the USA (n=1,017). Richly varied and complex findings emerge supporting the merit of this utopian idea. In particular, the importance of pro-environmental self-identity. This study illustrates how the post-capitalism notions of radical incrementalism and people power can initiate change using the civic, political, and environmental activism in sustainable consumption behaviours. Emerging implications for the viability of SDG-12 are also considered. This work offers rich opportunities for further research.
Consumers use different strategies to lead companies to behave environmentally. While boycotts are the most common ones, buycotts are relatively novel and more research is needed to understand this ...new phenomenon. This study aimed to comparatively investigate the antecedents (self-enhancement, moral obligation, expected efficacy) and consequences (self-esteem, subjective well-being) of participation in boycotts and buycotts. Besides, self-esteem is expected to be both a predictor of subjective well-being and also a mediator between participation intention and subjective well-being. The study also investigates the moderating effects of materialism on the impacts of participation motivations. According to the results, all hypotheses related to direct and indirect effects were supported, and the relationships were observed differently for boycotts and buycotts. Also, we found some significant moderator effects of materialism.
From a sustainability perspective, city-level CO2 emissions require reconsiderations. Correspondingly, the economy-environment-society nexus should be incorporated into city-scale CO2 accounting. ...Therefore, in this study, the semi-closed IO model is integrated with a HEM to calculate CO2 emissions arising from the social consumption pattern and income distribution, and to explore economic drivers behind CO2 variations. This method is applied to a case study of Beijing. Result demonstrate that Beijing in 2012 witnessed something different from that in 2005: (1) CO2 emissions centred in the internal linkages of a broader class of consumption terms with high economic output, mainly driven by interprovincial exports; (2) imports increasingly helped decarbonize the mixed, net forward and backward CO2 linkages of consumption items; and (3) income-driven CO2 emissions excluding demand-side parts persisted, which were more obvious on the supply side where households have more economy-wide effects. Besides, urban households played an essential role in household-wide CO2 reductions. This paper ended with corresponding conclusions, policy implications and directions for future work.
Extant embodied cognition research suggests that individuals can reduce a perceived lack of interpersonal warmth by substituting physical warmth, and vice versa. We suggest that this behavior is ...self-regulatory in nature and that this self-regulation can be accomplished via consumptive behavior. Experiment 1 found that consumers perceived ambient temperature to be significantly lower when eating alone compared to eating with a partner. Experiment 2 found that consuming a cool (vs. warm) drink led individuals to generate more socially-oriented attributes for a hypothetical product. Experiment 3 found that physically cooler individuals desired a social consumption setting, whereas physically warmer individuals desired a lone consumption setting. We interpret these results within the context of self-regulation, such that perceived physical temperature deviations from a steady state unconsciously motivate the individual to find bodily balance in order to alleviate that deviation.