Green Consumerism: A Cross-Cultural Linguistic and Sentiment Analysis of Sustainable Consumption Discourse on Twitter (X)

Abstract

Green consumerism research suffers from a paucity of comprehensive, cross-cultural investigations and lacks insight into the interplay of sustainability dimensions and human values. This study examined sustainable consumption-specific tweets (N = 72,000) in the United States, Switzerland, and India. Findings indicate that consumers in India (i.e., the non-Western culture) emphasized the environmental and social dimensions of sustainability as well as the biospheric and altruistic values in their tweets. The two Western cultures focused more on egoistic values and the economic aspects of sustainability. Indian and Swiss consumer sentiments were largely positive, whereas the American consumers expressed more negative sentiments. Results can offer important culturally informed and contextually sensitive recommendations to marketers and policymakers for sustainability communications.