Trends in Sustainable Behaviour of Consumers in Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa: A Critical Discourse

Abstract

Across the globe, the issues of loss of biodiversity, industrial pollution, prolifreation of non-degradable plastics wastes, unhealthy mining activities, and climate change have imposed a new behavioural lifestyle on the individuals and the businesses in the society—a situation which academics and policymakers have tagged sustainabile behaviour. Scholars from the developed countries have written extensively on this important phenonomeon from multidisciplinary lenses. However, academic research on the sustainable behaviours of consumers are recently emerging in the Eastern Europe and Sub-Sharan Africa. This chapter critically discusses the trends in sustainable behaviour of consumers in Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. Using a desk research technique, a qualitative research method as well as an interpretivist research paradigm, the authors provides a rich analytical tool for understanding the trends in sustainable behaviour of consumers from conceptual, theoretical and empirical studies in the two regions. In contextualising the trends, the paper found that in Eastern Europe and SSA the challenges of sustainability have forced human beings to adopt and adapt to green orientations and sustainable lifestyles called the sustainable behaviours. There have emerged in both contexts sustainable behaviour of consumers in the forms of green consumers, sustainable marketers, sustainable crop producers, sustainable agriculturists, green advocates, green policymakers, green politicians, conservationists, responsible investors or socially responsible investors, sustainable tourists and host of others. And the policy makers with support from hotels and green advocates, are influencing and reinventing consumers behaviour through campaigns and sensitisation initiatives aimed at reducing wasteful consumption, wasteful spending, irresponsible lifestyles, and habits.