THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN CONSUMPTION VALUE AND VOLUNTARY SIMPLICITY LIFESTYLE AND EFFECT ON ENVIRONMENTALLY RESPONSIBLE CONSUMERISM

Abstract

Environmentally responsible consumerism is defined as consumers' tendency to evaluate the environmental attributes of products before making buying decisions. Environmentally responsible consumerism is ethical consumption, and this consumption is affected by many factors. Two of these factors are voluntary simplicity lifestyle, and consumption values. Voluntary simplicity lifestyle is defined as a way of life that rejects the high-consumption, materialistic lifestyles, and affirms what is often called ‘the simplicity life’. Consumption value is defined as consumer’s overall assessment of the utility of a product and service. These values are defined as conditional, functional, emotional, social, and epistemic environmental values. In this study, it is aimed to examine the relationship between consumption value and voluntary simplicity lifestyle, and consider the impact of voluntary simplicity lifestyle and consumption values on environmentally responsible consumerism. The data were collected from undergraduates at Ege University in Izmir and Mus Alparslan University in Mus which are in the West and East of Turkey, respectively. According to the results, there is a relationship between consumption value and voluntary simplicity lifestyle and effect of these factors on environmentally responsible consumerism.