Bags for Life: The Embedding of Ethical Consumerism

2010

Abstract: Corporations and policy makers are bombarded with international surveys purporting to show that most consumers want ethical products. Yet when companies offer such products they are often met with indifference and limited uptake. It seems that survey radicals turn into economic conservatives at the checkout. This book reveals not only why the search for the 'ethical consumer'is futile but also why the social aspects of consumption cannot be ignored. Consumers are revealed to be much more deliberative and ...

International Journal of …, 2009

The adverse environmental impacts of plastic bags, including production energy costs, limited lifespan, increasing landfill content and inability to biodegrade, provide symbolic and practical evidence of a 'throwaway' consumer culture which acts as a significant barrier to sustainable consumption in particular and sustainable development in general. Decoupling consumer behaviour from plastic bag use is therefore an important challenge in the pursuit of sustainable consumption as a precursor to achieving sustainable development. This article provides a critical evaluation of that challenge, set within the theoretical framework of sustainable development. It examines the adverse environmental impacts of plastic bag use and evaluates initiatives by governments and businesses internationally to change consumer behaviour regarding the use of plastic bags in line with sustainable development principles. The politics of this agenda are analysed using a combination of consumer policy and public policy perspectives. Finally, the article draws conclusions regarding the earlier analysis.

Journal Of Sustainable Development, 2020

Despite good intentions, the increasing number of plastic bag bans aimed at alleviating marine plastic pollution saw a correlated increase in the number of unintended consequences that emerged alongside the bans, suggesting that human behavior towards plastic bag consumption have not changed, but merely shifted, and are feeding into other major international environmental catastrophes. Nudge theory, which helps people make better choices for themselves without inhibiting their free will, is a potential solution that has been shown to play a subtle but important role in providing options under circumstances where complex information needs to be streamlined for the wider community, avoiding any unintended consequences and behavioural shifts that might arise from instruments that diminishes autonomy. It is therefore timely to look into the insights of nudge theory to encourage a positive behavioural change to reduce plastic bag consumption. Here we apply a systematic literature review to show how successful applications of nudges in supermarkets can be leveraged to reduce plastic bag consumption. We find that the current applications of nudges in various industries worldwide, including supermarkets have produced positive and encouraging results, as well as producing lasting behavioural change among the wider community. Supermarkets are identified as a powerful deployment site of these nudges due to their positioning as a dominant provider of plastic bags to the wider community, as well as being the largest and leading provider of daily food needs. Finally, we synthesise our findings to produce a coherent and testable framework of actionable interventions that supermarkets can employ to nudge customers towards reduced plastic bag reliance, accompanied with a visual timeline of a customer shopping in a supermarket experiencing these nudges.

Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 2007

2018

By submitting this thesis electronically, I declare that the entirety of the work contained therein is my own, original work, that I am the sole author thereof (save to the extent explicitly otherwise stated), that the reproduction and publication thereof by Stellenbosch University will not infringe any third-party rights and that I have not previously in its entirety or in part submitted it to obtain any qualification.

Central European Business Review

Consumers express their ethics through their consumption decisions. The article examines the preferences of Czech respondents in the area of ethical consumption. The aim of the study is to find out the respondents' attitudes towards ethical shopping. We apply a series of ordinal regression analyses to analyse the data from the survey (N=1670; aged 15-93 years, M ± SD: 35.51 ± 16.82; 62.00% women; 32.10% with higher education) conducted in 2021. In some cases, the results of the survey are compared with surveys on the same topic conducted in 2016 and 2018. The research found that customer interest in purchasing is growing, but this trend has not yet manifested itself in the volume of purchases. Beyond the reasons, the decision to buy, ignore ethical products or boycott unethical products is largely linked to the natural interest and availability of information about 'ethical shopping' in general and 'ethical' products. The results suggest that personal responsibility is the most important reason for ethical shopping. Poor availability in the sales network, disinterest, and higher prices were the most significant reasons for not buying "ethical" products. This research extends existing studies by examining the reasons for purchasing or ignoring so-called ethical products in relation to the intensity of their purchase. We believe that the results of the research can be used as baseline data to support targeted ethical purchasing, for example through education. To achieve long-term sustainability, current patterns of behaviour and consumption need to change at all levels. Environmental protection and sustainability are now increasingly implemented in most EU policies, programmes, and regulations. In the case of Central European economies, the transition towards sustainable and environmentally neutral practices is still delayed. One of the key prerequisites for sustainable development and its further expansion is sustainable consumption at the level of consumers. The results of our analysis can be used to broaden awareness and raise shoppers' understanding as an important tool to increase ethical consumption behaviour.

NIM Marketing Intelligence Review

Consumers' purchases often conflict with their ethical values Consumers generally don't want to harm others or the environment through their purchases. It would make sense, then, that their shopping behavior should reflect these values. For example, if they like the idea of good labor practices, they should purchase jeans made solely by adult workers paid fair wages. If they desire to reduce environmental waste, they should seek out a backpack made with recycled materials. In reality, actual consumer choices often do not reflect their values. Our research has illuminated some psychological barriers that can stop even well-intentioned consumers from making ethical consumption choices. Reasons for ethically inconsistent purchase decisions When shopping for fun products like jeans, few people take a moment to think about troublesome issues such as children being exploited in factories. Thus, there is an inherent barrier to getting consumers to consider product ethicality. Unfortunately, it is often easy enough to avoid information about ethically-charged, and less pleasant, product features because the information is not readily available. Although it is usually very easy to find facts about non-ethical product attributes such as price, information on a product's ethicality can be tougher to locate. Shoppers often need to purposefully seek out relevant clues, such as by finding a report about a company's ethics. Sometimes it might just be emotionally easier to not seek the information out, even if they might care about it. Consumers use the following coping strategies to maintain a good mood and avoid the emotional difficulty of thinking about ideas such as labor mistreatment or environmental problems.

Visegrad Journal on Bioeconomy and Sustainable Development, 2015

This article analyses past and current state of plastic bags usage and reviews the major challenges in addressing the issue of its reduction with emphasis on failure and success of the chosen policy. Given the heterogeneous impacts of government policies, it is important to understand the consumer behaviour and motivation for purchasing plastic bags. This can help to make a fundamental shift in reduction of plastic bags usage by the demand side, which supplement government’s efforts to address the issue from the supply side.

British Journal of Sociology, 2010

Our everyday shopping practices are increasingly marketed as opportunities to ‘make a difference’ via our ethical consumption choices. In response to a growing body of work detailing the ways in which specific alignments of ‘ethics’ and ‘consumption’ are mediated, we explore how ‘ethical’ opportunities such as the consumption of Fairtrade products are recognized, experienced and taken-up in the everyday. The ‘everyday’ is approached here via a specially commissioned Mass Observation directive, a volunteer panel of correspondents in the UK. Our on-going thematic analysis of their autobiographical accounts aims to explore a complex unevenness in the ways ‘ordinary’ people experience and negotiate calls to enact their ethical agency through consumption. Situating ethical consumption, moral obligation and choice in the everyday is, we argue, important if we are to avoid both over-exaggerating the reflexive and self-conscious sensibilities involved in ethical consumption, and, adhering to a reductive understanding of ethical self-expression.

Journal of Cultural Economy, 2019

In this paper, I conceptualise ethical consumption applications (ECAs) as market innovations inflected in processes of configuring market actors and market (re)framings. The introduction of ECAs through the work of civil society is not only about changing frames of market exchange, but also work in the register of making 'good consumers' and consumers as 'agents of change' and moralising markets. Thus, a more accurate concept for these devices is suggested: 'quasi' market devices. The main aim of this paper is to analyse how consumers attached to and resisted use of ECAs designed to assist in product choices and shape responsible everyday practices. Based on qualitative fieldwork in Sweden, the article applies a methodology grounded in Science and Technology-inspired market studies in combination with Consumer Culture Theory's (CCT) interest in identity work and sense-making associated with technology consumption. Although available at the time of the empirical data collection period of the study, all three apps were off the market during the analytic work of this paper; a major argument for focusing on barriers to acceptance of the apps and trying to conceptualise how such non-acceptance can be understood.

Quest Journal of Management and Social Sciences

Background: Although consumers are increasingly concerned with ethical factors when forming product opinions and making purchase decisions, recent studies have highlighted significant differences between consumers’ ethical consumption intentions and their actual buying behavior.Various dimensions concerning how consumers make purchase and consumption decisions and the driving forces behind them have been identified through this study. Objectives: This paper aims to explore the factors leading the gap between attitudes and behavior of consumers in relation to ethical consumption. Methods: The desk review carried out on various related studies reflects that the factors that obstruct the process of ethical consumption and thereby being responsible in forming attitude-behavior gap, which can be helpful in the course of management decision implications worth encouragement of ethical consumption behavior. Moreover, conceptual framework that has been developed for ethical consumption also ...

Geoforum, 2015

The purpose of this paper is to examine how individuals define ethical consumption (EC) and then how they negotiate ethical consumption as they move from one country to another. The authors explore these questions by reporting on and interpreting the evolution of their understanding of EC and their own ethical consumption behavior, the EC practices that have endured over time and national contexts, the tensions they encountered in maintaining EC practices in these transitions and the adaptive strategies they used to manage those tensions. While there has been research on the tensions faced by individuals practicing EC, there has been a paucity of research investigating those tensions from a crosscountry and longitudinal perspective. Moreover, although several studies have focused on EC purchase practices of specific goods (e.g., athletic shoes, fair-trade commodities), none has considered this question in the context of purchases of basic needs categories-food, water, energy, transportation and housing. Each of the three authors has been able to maintain his or her own personal consumption ethic in spite of living in different countries. Whenever consumption practices emanate from, and are imbedded within, a strong ethical framework of values that informs EC, each was able to make the necessary adjustments to overcome the obstacles and points of resistance across countries. Even in those situations involving considerable inconvenience and discomfort, each used adaptive strategies that allowed retention of their consumption practices. Among those strategies employed by the authors were choice of community in which to live, self-regulation and self-reliance.

Journal of Business Ethics, 2011

Although consumers are increasingly engaged with ethical factors when forming opinions about products and making purchase decisions, recent studies have highlighted significant differences between consumers' intentions to consume ethically, and their actual purchase behaviour. This article contributes to an understanding of this "ethical purchasing gap" through a review of existing literature, and the inductive analysis of focus group discussions. A model is suggested which includes exogenous variables such as moral maturity and age which have been well covered in the literature, together with further impeding factors identified from the focus group discussions. For some consumers, inertia in purchasing behaviour was such that the decision-making process was devoid of ethical considerations. Several manifested their ethical views through post-purchase dissonance and retrospective feelings of guilt. Others displayed a reluctance to consume ethically due to personal constraints, a perceived negative impact on image or quality, or an outright negation of responsibility. Those who expressed a desire to consume ethically often seemed deterred by cynicism, which caused them to question the impact they, as an individual, could achieve. These findings enhance the understanding of ethical consumption decisions and provide a platform for future research in this area.