Conclusions & Future Directions for Research

Conclusions

This qualitative analysis of college students’ attitudes toward sustainable goods was designed to add nuance to the way we understand how consumers perceive sustainable goods. In the semi-structured interviews I noticed a consistent way of framing “sustainable brands” as compared to “unsustainable brands.” Namely, sustainable brands were associated with small businesses, transparent operations (U.S., local, co-ops), and expensive goods, while unsustainable brands were associated with big businesses, opaque operations (overseas production), and cheap goods. Moreover, sustainable brands were also associated with certain positive affective qualities – concern (for the community, employees, and the environment) and an authentic image. Unsustainable brands were widely associated with negative affective qualities – namely disregard (for the community, employees, and the environment) and a constructed image, which participants did not consider trustworthy.

When participants were asked to sort a series of corporate behaviors associated with sustainability into a hierarchy according to which behaviors the participants believed were most important, the resulting hierarchies reflected a real concern for ethical business generally, but less dedication to spending capital to ensure that ethical business is practiced. Indeed, participants consistently sorted sustainable business behaviors that require companies to adhere to regulations or expend capital toward the bottom of their hierarchies. This is “concern for capital,” or the idea that although a person may feel positively about purchasing sustainable products and enjoy the concept of sustainable business, they are simultaneously worried that operating a sustainable business is antithetical to accumulating capital and thus an inappropriate strategy to prefer. I consider concern for capital an additional barrier to purchasing sustainable products along with barriers identified by participants: (1) high price, (2) lack of information, and (3) lack of availability.

If the opinion of my study participants is any indicator, it seems that one of the reasons we see a significant attitude-behavior discrepancy when it comes to American consumption of sustainable goods is because Americans don’t always think sustainability makes good business sense. They are concerned for capital, and see sustainability as at least somewhat antithetical to it. To temper this concern for capital I recommended two global policies that could serve to tip the scales in favor of sustainable production: establishing a pigouvian tax on carbon and a large scale attempt to reproduce the California Effect by raising sustainability standards in developed countries while conditioning market access on adhering to those standards. These are undeniably difficult policies to implement, especially on a global level. Nonetheless, they bear mentioning.

My more reasonable recommendations deal with breaking down the three barriers (1) high price, (2) lack of information, and (3) lack of availability, which may serve to temper the attitudes of consumers toward purchasing sustainable products, and diminish the persistence of (4) concern for capital. These recommendations are designed to encourage growth in the market for sustainable products through consumer demand.

Future Directions for Research

Further research is needed to fully understand sustainability as a concept, how consumers interact with sustainable goods and what is likely to convince or dissuade them from purchasing these goods.

Beyond Early Adopters

To evaluate whether sustainable business practices and purchasing sustainable goods are of concern to groups that do not fit the ‘early adopter’ description it would be interesting to employ this survey methodology to other groups. I recommend exploring the viewpoints of relatively economically disadvantaged populations, elderly populations, and relatively uneducated populations. Applying this survey design to other groups may require some adjustment of the brands used as primers so that the particular group is able to recognize the brand and make judgments about it. In this case it may be helpful for the researcher to be familiar with the population, at least through empirical study and/or observational research.

Small Companies & Sustainable Business

Participants consistently noted that small companies have a heightened capacity to operate their business sustainably. Small businesses, however, are often legally exempt from reporting information about their operations. This isn’t bad thing, by any means. Indeed, transparency can be a very onerous apparatus, and it may not be appropriate for every “mom and pop shop” to spend the time and money it would take to document their business practices. To evaluate whether small businesses deserve to be associated with sustainability I recommend a survey of small businesses in an effort to understand just how sustainable they are. The survey could be administered to small business owners and would ask them to take account of their sustainable business practices, which could be modeled on the eleven sustainable business practices I used in this project (The Semi-Structured Interview Process / April 15, 2010).

Situational Primers and Sustainable Consumption

Social science research has continually showed the effects of priming on attitudes and actions. In one study, participants were primed with words related to elderly stereotypes were likely to walk more slowly down the hallway after finishing the experiment than the control group (Bargh, Chen, & Burrows, 1996). It would be interesting to evaluate whether situational primers might make a consumer more likely to purchase a sustainable product.

The study might take place in a grocery store with a pair (or several pairs) of brands, to be displayed next to one another. One of the two products should be marked in some way that distinguishes it as sustainable. Before entering the store to do their shopping, consumers would be primed to think about values related to sustainability; for instance, they may witness a small group of people planting a tree or see some information the reminds them of social instability like a poster about child laborers. Would these positive primers actually affect real life purchasing decisions? Additionally, prices between the sustainable and unsustainable brand could be altered to be either more egalitarian or more differentiated as a method of determining at what cost people would choose the sustainable good in a primed vs. unprimed condition.

Policy Recommendations: Price

Policy Recommendations

In order to encourage companies to make tradeoffs between social, environmental, and economic concerns, steps must be taken to lower the barriers to consuming sustainable products: (1) high price, (2) lack of information, and (3) lack of availability, and (4) concern for capital so they may experience sales growth. By breaking down these barriers consumers may begin to see the real costs of the products they purchase, which may diminish their concern for capital, or their willingness to preference capital over sustainability concerns when they are in conflict.

(1) Price

Price is the largest obstacle to purchases of green products, according to a survey of 3,600 consumers by the UK Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (McKinsey, 2008). Many of these products are more expensive than their equivalents for good reasons. First, there may be a relatively small market for these products, there are additional costs associated with certification, and there is relatively more money going to the producer in terms of income as well as for business development.

While there may be costs associated with sustainable goods, there are also significant costs associated with unsustainable production, which are considered negative externalities[1]. In the case of externalities, prices do not reflect the full costs or benefits of producing or consuming a product or service, and too much or too little of the good will be produced or consumed in terms of overall costs and benefits to society. For example, when workers are severely underpaid for their labor (as in the case of unregulated sweatshop and agricultural labor), inadequate wages impose significant costs on the laborer and his or her family as well as the society who must address the multiplicity of problems related to poverty -- inadequate access to nutritional food, education, health care, housing, transportation, etc. When the full cost labor is not taken into account the product is produced too cheaply and does not reflect the costs of production like providing an adequate standard of living for those employed producing it. Another example of an externality is that automobiles are not priced to take into account the costs of the pollution they generate. Because this cost is not included, the price of an automobile does not fully reflect the cost of the automobile to society.

Pigouvian Taxes: To confront parties with the issue of externalities the economist Arthur Pigou proposed taxing the goods that were the source of the negative externality. These Pigouvian taxes would correct the price to accurately reflect the cost of the goods' production to society, thereby internalizing the costs associated with producing the good (Baumol, 1972). An example of a Pigouvian tax is a carbon tax, which increases the competitiveness of non-carbon technologies like solar, hydro, wind, and nuclear power compared to the traditional burning of fossil fuels, thus helping to protect the environment while raising revenues for non-carbon technologies.

A carbon tax, however, must be administered worldwide in order to ameliorate the global warming already under way (Nader & Heaps, 2008). It would probably require a global body to adjust and regulate this tax, but considering the unsuccessful nature of the Copenhagen climate summit, we may be quite far from establishing any sort of legally binding agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Furthermore, within Pigou's framework, the changes involved are marginal, and the size of the externality is assumed to be small enough not to distort the rest of the economy. Some argue, however, the impact of climate change could result in catastrophe and non-marginal changes (Helm, 2005).

The California Effect: The California Effect, or the use of market incentives to promote the ratcheting upward of regulatory standards provides evidence that it may be possible for developed countries to impose higher regulatory standards without a significant loss of capital. In 1970 the Clean Air Act Amendment permitted California to enact stricter emissions standards than the rest of the United States. Although automobile manufacturers had to spend extra capital to produce more efficient cars, they did not simply abandon California as a market. This shows political jurisdictions that develop stricter product standards may have the ability to force producers to design products that meet those standards or else deny them access to its markets (Vogel, 1997).

Developed countries, like the state of California, are in a position to establish higher standards to encourage the adoption of social and environmental standards around the world. These standards might ensure things like living wages, safe working conditions, corporate community engagement and environmental stewardship in developing as well as developed nations. As developing countries look for ways to access the markets of developed countries to fuel their economic growth, these market incentives may actually bolster the social and environmental standards of companies and countries. Without these market incentives from developed countries, however, governments and companies around the world would have relatively little reason to bolster their social and environmental standards. Instead, they may focus on creating cheap exports, which may not be compatible with regulation in favor of sustainability.

The United States’ decision to import sustainably produced goods may be especially helpful to temper the populist anger that my respondents expressed toward big businesses that produce overseas. While it is not necessarily true that these companies are the least sustainable, my respondents negative attitudes toward them and were quick to characterize them as exploitive. If the U.S. made it known that they would only import goods that met certain socially and environmentally sustainable criteria, the citizens would have little reason to assume that the goods they purchase were made in undesirable conditions.

It is unlikely, however, that the U.S. would decide unilaterally to begin exclusively importing sustainable goods, as it would put them at a distinct disadvantage in the market. Again, it may be most effective to establish an international body of developed countries that are willing to condition access to their markets on producing goods sustainably. To avoid unreasonable or unequal expectations, I suggest that each of the developed countries also adopt these standards of sustainability.

Creating international bodies to levy carbon taxes and set global labor standards, however, is a very difficult process. In light of this difficulty, perhaps the real question we should ask is not “how expensive are sustainable products,” but “how do my purchasing habits affect the global population and environment?” One way to do this is to ensure that consumers understand the financial and environmental returns on their investment in sustainable products. Indeed, consumers may be more willing to try new ones—especially those that cost more—when they find it easy to track the savings (McKinsey, 2008). One way to do this is to educate the consumer about the product decisions he could potentially make.

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[1] An externality is a cost or benefit not transmitted through prices, which is incurred by a party who did not agree to the action that caused the cost or benefit.