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.

Results and Discussion of Exercise 1

And now for the results of Exercise 1 and some discussion! Remember, the instructions for Exercise 1 were, "Please sort these branded cards according to how sustainable you believe them to be. Create three groups: sustainable brands, unsustainable brands, and brands of unknown sustainability. You may have as many or as few cards in each group as you wish, but you must sort all the cards into one of the piles. The brands were as follows:

1. Adidas
2. American Apparel

3. Ben & Jerry’s
4. Chipotle
5. Chiquita
6. Haagen Dazs
7. Kettle Chips
8. SunChips
9. Timberland
10. Urban Outfitters

Results and Discussion of Exercise 1

The Structure of Sustainable Brands: Participants tended to frame brands as “sustainable” if they perceived them to be (1) a small business (2) a business with transparent operations and (3) a business that produces expensive products. The notion of transparent operations was heavily associated with domestic (U.S.) production, local products, and products produced by co-ops.

Small

On her feelings about big-business:

I don't know whether or not this is just a contrived thing of American culture but I, I definitely seem to trust it more if it's a smaller company. Um, for instance if I see, like, P&G says that they're, um, Proctor & Gamble has, like, cut energy by, like, a large, large percentage, or like, has made something organically I'm much more -- I'm much less likely to trust it than, like, if I see a smaller, like, farm company, um, saying the same thing. – Participant 26 #344-348

On why he placed Ben & Jerry’s in the sustainable category:

Just the whole idea of the theme that they’re trying to adopt it seemed like it was "alternative" to the big company – big corporation. And they started they started small, so I just associate those things with sustainable practices and other good things. Participant 27 #28-30

On why small businesses are more free to pursue sustainable strategies:

Larger corporations have a…larger pressure to make more money and smaller corporations can be based more around ideals. Participant 25 #414-416

Transparent

On why she sorted American Apparel into the sustainable category:

I mean, they are American Apparel; I think all of their clothing is made in the United States. It is -- I don’t know if it’s part of their mantra to be like fair in the labor wages and practices but I hope so -- assume so because it’s in this country. Participant 35 #11-14

On how Adidas could prove it is sustainable:

I don't know what kind of campaign they could put on. They'd try and keep jobs here and not exploit workers in other countries, you know, keep wages up well. Decrease the waste they produce. Again they'd have to show me that they were letting consumers know they were doing that. I'm not exactly sure how they would -- if they could directly make commercials to show that they are making efforts to stay sustainable. Participant 21 #146-150

Expensive

On the expense of sustainable clothing:

When I see things marketed as “environmentally friendly organic cotton” they’re way more expensive, so it’s hard for even me to make the decision to buy them. Participant 29 #205-207

On purchasing ethically made clothing:

You have to go to specialty stores, but then it’s really expensive -- out of my price range. You’ll see a lot of organic cotton, or things made out of hemp, or bamboo. So I think it’s there but you have to go looking for it and you can’t always afford it unless you are some chi chi environmentalist. Participant 9 #243-245

The Structure of Unsustainable Brands: Participants tended to frame a brand as “unsustainable” if they perceived it to be affiliated with (1) a big business (2) a business with opaque operations and (3) a business that produces cheap products. The notion of opaque operations was heavily associated with producing goods overseas in areas like China, South America, and Southeast Asia. These factors mirror the perceptions relied upon to distinguish the “sustainable” brands.

Big

On the sustainability potential of Unilever v. Ben & Jerry’s:

Unilever is a bigger corporation so I don’t know the specifics but I feel like with a bigger corporation it’s easier to move away from any mission they see as unprofitable. Whereas Ben and Jerry’s might just do stuff because the founders want to do it and it’s a good thing to do, a bigger corporation might not be as concerned with that. Participant 10 #88-92

On why he sorted Chiquita as unsustainable:

I assume they’re also a big company so are not really concerned with how their bananas are made in terms of environmental impact because they’re just trying to make money. Participant 10 #135-136

Opaque

On his skepticism about SunChips sustainable advertising:

I remember seeing those commercials that saying that their chips are solar powered and there are like those people dancing in the field, which is just so ridiculous, but I mean I’m sure they couldn’t say it unless it was partly true. But it’s like, okay, you’re giving me no actual information. You’re saying solar power and you’re showing happy people dancing and eating SunChips. That’s just like all right...that doesn’t tell me anything. Participant 40 #274-280

On why she sorted Urban Outfitters as unsustainable:

Urban Outfitters I put as unsustainable simply because on their labels, I mean, most of their clothing is coming from Southeast Asia and China, and based on broad sweeping generalizations and prior knowledge, most of the factories where these are made are big polluters, they are not necessarily paying fair wages. Participant 9 #211-213

On why he sorted Adidas as unsustainable:

When I think shoe companies I think sweatshops. And that's pretty much the same for the two clothing companies as well. I just think child laborers in China or something. Participant 27 #104-105

Cheap

On the price of producing sustainable goods:

There’s always going to be a price issue because one of the reasons they’re made so unsustainably is because it would cost money to do it sustainably, so I often thought to myself if I knew that something was more environmentally friendly and the difference in price was not prohibitive, I would actively support that. Participant 29 #222-225

On why he placed Adidas in the unsustainable group:

I know Adidas works with rubber for example for their shoes, so I'm sure that it's cheaper to synthetically make rubber in a less-sustainable way. Again, I don't know anything that Adidas does in that direction I just assumed that they are looking for profit margins since I've never heard them advertising anything towards sustainability. Participant 6 #183-186

I think Wal-Mart is sort of notorious for poor labor practices and that’s why they’re so cheap. Participant 35 #698-699

Unknown Sustainability

When participants categorized a brand as being of “unknown sustainability” they attributed some factors from the “sustainable” category as well as some factors from the “unsustainable” category to the brand. Timberland was sorted into this pile on several occasions because my participants had a difficult time deciding whether the brand’s association with nature was indicative of sustainable business. Both Participant 43 and Participant 27 saw a potential conflict between the ‘naturalist’ philosophy of the brand and the way it is manufactured, leading them to place it in the unknown category.

I don't really know anything about Timberland. The only thing I really associate them with is an outdoorsy back to nature philosophy, but I don't really identify that as - I mean you think they serve to like outdoors oriented clientele that they would be environmentally responsible, but that doesn't mean they're socially responsible and it doesn't actually mean they're environmentally responsible, so I don't really know. Participant 43 #187-191

Timberland I had no idea either way. I had my clothing manufacturer pointing me towards bad, but there are all sorts of naturalist stuff. So that was a good pull and I decided to put it in the middle, but I don’t really know. Participant 27 #173-175

Although I recruited participants who claimed to be differently committed to caring about sustainable business practices and buying sustainable goods, these respondents adhered to these frameworks relatively consistently, so the way participants characterized “sustainable” and “unsustainable” brands was basically consistent across responses.

Affective Qualities of Sustainable and Unsustainable Brands: Participants were also likely to associate “sustainable” and “unsustainable” brands with different affective qualities. Sustainable brands were characterized as brands from companies with “authentically sustainable business practices” as well as a “concern” for communities, the environment, and their employees. For instance, Participant 29 considered SunChips authentically sustainable because they were engaged in operating sustainably before it was popular.

They were doing that a few years before the whole fad, to my knowledge, and so I think it’s something they actually care about – it’s a priority to the corporation or its directors that “this is our model, this is our marketing, this is who we are. Participant 29 #29-31

Participant 22 characterized Ben & Jerry’s as authentically sustainable because of the company was started with sustainable values in mind.

I can't say…that I put that much research into the sustainability of Ben & Jerry's, but knowing how they started...just like together as like these two liberal guys and everything like that. And although it has grown to this huge corporation I feel like they still have some moral, more progressive values behind what they do. Participant 22 #10-14.

Regarding a company’s concern for communities, people, and the environment, Participant 11 noted that SunChips might be considered sustainable because it is healthy, which is good for people and may reflect a larger concern for workers and the environment.

I felt they probably wouldn't be as bad as someone like Lays because of the fact that like the product itself is marginally more healthy, so maybe that like translates into a little bit of a greater consciousness about workers rights and environmental rights. Participant 11 #84-87

Participant 17 was willing to sort Timberland into the sustainable category based on the fact that they seem to care about nature.

They have a tree on their logo, and if you care about trees and the outdoors, then you are probably sustainable in some capacity. Participant 17 #333-334

Participant 26 noted that she would be more willing to sort companies who are engaged with the community into the sustainable group. Interacting with members of the community is associated with concern on the part of the business.

For a company to be well-rounded I think that the company should just interact on a more personal level with the people it’s working to serve -- the people who purchase the products. Participant 26 #473-475

Unsustainable brands, on the other hand, were characterized as brands from companies that had either no sustainable business practices or sustainable claims based on minimal actions and falsely constructed images of sustainability. For instance, when Participant 38 talked about whether one should trust organic labels, he alluded to the notion that some companies would purposely lie to consumers to sell sustainable products.

They don’t realize that words like organic can be like argued for if they were actually like contested. Someone could easily just say like well yeah, it’s organic because I do this one thing and, you know, I am not claiming that I do all these other things, I just say it’s organic. And I think a lot of companies are exploiting that, because people are really getting into like eco, into anything that you put “eco” in front of they’re like, “Oh, that’s environmentally friendly, I’ll pay an extra like 50 cents for that.” Participant 38 #110-115

Similarly, Participant 26 noted that SunChips should not necessarily be considered sustainable regardless of how it is marketed because a company that does not exude sustainable qualities owns it.

I think it does help Frito-Lay's image, to have this company that's considered healthier and made through means that don't harm the environment as much. So I think it does help Frito-Lay as a brand, but it also kind of takes away from the impact that SunChips have, because they are made by this giant conglomerate that doesn't necessarily stand for sustainability. Participant 26 #130-13