Unsustainable Behavior Research Articles

Breakdown of the co-creation process on social media: developing the value co-washing framework and stakeholders dynamics

Purpose Social media platforms facilitate brand-consumer interactions by leveraging principles from nudging, value co-creation and social identity theories. This study aims to investigate how these interactions mask harmful practices and accelerate market access, perpetuating extreme consumerism. Specifically, the authors explore how value flow on social media, across distinct stakeholders, leads to value co-washing, revealing their collective unsustainable behaviours and related effects. Design/methodology/approach The authors use a mixed-methods approach, conducting content and sentiment analysis on nine TikTok videos featuring products from a leading Chinese company and analysing 19,816 user comments. Findings The value co-washing framework is developed across three building blocks: brands, creators and users. Findings uncover a paradigm shift in stakeholders’ dynamics, highlighting how social media collaborative engagements foster value co-washing. User involvement is categorized into three distinct clusters – brand lovers, saga creators and boycotters. The analysis identifies nine thematic patterns, including value co-creation, brand promotion, audience retention and calls for responsibility. Sentiment analysis reveals a dominance of neutral sentiments, reflecting a widespread unawareness and social adherence to value co-washing. Originality/value The proposed framework innovatively maps how distinct stakeholders contribute to extreme consumerism through value co-washing, providing foundational insights into the underlying mechanisms of consumer behaviour.

Ecofeminist Kitchens: Reimagining Professional Kitchens as Spaces of Sustainable Foodwork

Professional kitchens are both producers and consumers of food and many operate through unsustainable practices which have significant social and ecological impacts. Socially, they are spaces of low paid, high-pressured work, where gendered occupational discrimination is common. Ecologically, food production in these spaces contributes significantly to the demand for unethical meat production and the commodification of nature globally. The main aim of this article is to reimagine professional kitchens as spaces of sustainable and equitable foodwork. To this end, this research combines an empirical analysis of the relation between gender, power, and sustainability in professional kitchens in Glasgow with a theoretical examination of ecofeminist scholarship. In Glasgow, data were collected through semi-structured interviews with both male and female head chefs on the everyday (un)sustainable practices and norms of professional chefs and the ways they intertwine with gender. This research found that kitchens are organised in ways that normalize toxic masculinity, disempower women, and seriously harm non-human others. Furthermore, the absence of ecological literacy in professional kitchens is shown to be a significant driver of unsustainable behaviours. Drawing on ecofeminist scholarship, this article goes on to envision what changes are needed for a sustainable and equitable transformation in professional kitchens. Based on this theoretical engagement, I argue that transforming professional kitchens requires a redistribution of power across genders to eradicate sexist hierarchies. Furthermore, there is a need to decenter economic profit to make space for an ethic of compassion which fulfils our moral obligations to both human and non-human others.

Erişimden Korumaya: Küresel Su Sorununu Ele Alma

Su, yaşamın devamı için temel bir gerekliliktir. İnsanlığın, su kaynaklarının adil bir şekilde dağıtılması ve adil bir şekilde yönetilmesi hayati önem taşımaktadır. Bu, su kaynaklarının sürdürülebilir kullanımını sağlar ve herkesin temiz ve sağlıklı suya erişimini garanti eder. Su kaynakları azalıyor ve giderek kirleniyor, bu da su kıtlığı ve kirliliği gibi ciddi sorunlara yol açıyor. Su kıtlığı, suyun yetersiz olduğu veya kalitesinin bozulduğu durumları ifade eder, bu da toplumlar, tarım ve ekosistemler üzerinde önemli etkilere neden olur. Tarım, suya ağır bir şekilde bağımlı olduğundan su kıtlığından özellikle etkilenir. Su, çeşitli organizmalar için yaşamın temel bir kaynağı olduğu için ekosistemler de su kıtlığından zarar görür. Su kirliliği, insan sağlığı ve çevre için tehditler oluşturur. Endüstriyel atıklar, tarımsal ilaçlar ve evsel atıklar gibi çeşitli kaynaklardan gelen kirleticiler, su kaynaklarının kirlenmesine neden olarak içme suyunun azalmasına ve sucul yaşamın ve ekosistemlerin zarar görmesine, sonuç olarak da biyoçeşitliliği etkiler. Su kaynaklarının korunması ve temiz suyun sağlanması için çeşitli stratejiler bulunmaktadır. Endüstriyel atık kontrolü, tarım uygulamalarının iyileştirilmesi ve evsel atık yönetimi gibi yöntemler, su kirliliğini önlemeye yardımcı olabilir. Ayrıca, suyu daha temiz hale getirmede su arıtma tesislerinin ve teknolojilerinin geliştirilmesi de hayati bir rol oynar. Su kaynakları üzerindeki iklim değişikliğinin etkileri de dikkate alınmalıdır. Artan sıcaklıklar, yağış desenlerindeki değişiklikler ve kuraklık riski gibi faktörler, su kaynaklarını önemli ölçüde etkiler.

“I am not unsustainable; I am on holiday!” moral disengagement and the holiday mindset of young travellers during a cruise

Tourists often fail to follow through with their sustainable behaviour intentions. This lack of compliance can only truly be explored by observing their actions when immersed in the context of a vacation. A holistic case study was conducted by monitoring a group of young consumers on a cruise. Five quantitative and qualitative methods (i.e. baggage audit, participant observation, photo elicitation, diary and introspection) have been employed to collect rich and diverse data on young tourists’ behaviours. This allowed to complement behavioural measures with young tourist lived experiences, overcoming the limitations of self-reported measures. The findings suggest that young tourists do not always behave sustainably while on a cruise, and they morally disengage from such behaviours to deal with those choices. Eleven macro-categories of (un)sustainable behaviours have been observed and identified before, during and after the cruise. The findings also highlight the emergence of four coping mechanisms that allow young tourists to disengage from the unsustainable behaviour and overcome the discrepancy between their pro-environmental values and behaviours. Managers in the tourism industry need to find communication strategies that appeal to the sense of responsibility of a tourist even before the journey and highlight a hedonic dimension to sustainable behaviours.

Equity and justice should underpin the discourse on tipping points

Abstract. Radical and quick transformations towards sustainability will be fundamental to achieving a more sustainable future. However, deliberate interventions to reconfigure systems will result in winners and losers, with the potential for greater or lesser equity and justice outcomes. Positive tipping points (PTPs) have been proposed as interventions in complex systems with the aim to (a) reduce the likelihood of negative Earth system tipping points and/or (b) increase the likelihood of achieving just social foundations. However, many narratives around PTPs often do not take into account the entire spectrum of impacts the proposed alternatives could have or still rely on narratives that maintain current unsustainable behaviours and marginalize many people (i.e. do not take “b” into account). One such example is the move from petrol-based to electric vehicles. An energy transition that remains based on natural resource inputs from the Global South must be unpacked with an equity and justice lens to understand the true cost of this transition. There are two arguments why a critical engagement with these and other similar proposals needs to be made. First, the idea of transitioning through a substitution (e.g. of fuel) while maintaining the system structure (e.g. of private vehicles) may not necessarily be conceived as the kind of radical transformation being called for by global scientific bodies like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES). Second, and probably more importantly, the question of positive for whom, positive where, and positive how must be considered. In this paper, we unpack these narratives using a critical decolonial view from the south and outline their implications for the concept of tipping points.

Promoting Wellness as a Primordial Prevention Strategy for Achieving Sustainable Public Health in the Post-Covid 19 Era.

The global scenario of a contracted economy over 4% and distraught healthcare systems due to the 2019 pandemic behooves us to redesign our strategies to move towards holistic approaches that allow health and wellbeing to be uniquely viewed within their contexts, promising sustainability. World-over, communities are more aware of the connectedness with nature and the role of positive behaviors. Disproportionate investments go into secondary and tertiary cure in healthcare systems and there is a minimal uptake of primary prevention. Investments in primordial prevention (PP) that can help achieve sustainable health are inadequate. PP is defined as an approach that prevents the risk factors for disease conditions from manifesting through maintenance of good health by embracing healthy environment, diet, and lifestyle behaviors, to function optimally. We propose integration of wellness as a primordial prevention strategy for sustainable public health using the 3 Ps: People, Places, and Policies/Programs. Wellness is holistic and multi-dimensional and is a primordial prevention concept as it focuses on people thriving based on a positive approach to health. The authors point out that the stumbling block in public health is due to unsustainable behavior as a result of misplaced priorities.

Processes of sustainability transformation across systems scales: leveraging systemic change in the textile sector

Sustainability research emphasizes the importance of intervening with both individual and organizational behaviours as well as the systems that shape them to create sustainability transformations. However, to date there is a lack of studies that bridge the divide between small case-based interventions and global systems at broader scales, and the complex interactions across scales and processes. This paper works with a leverage points framework to consider systems transformation. It focuses on four individual sustainability interventions in the textile sector and explores how they are embedded within a complex set of nested systems, and how these connected systems shape the transformative potential of the interventions. By using an onion metaphor for systems with several onion layers representing the current textile sector and its multiple connected and nested systems, we integrate and reflect across four in-depth case studies, conducted over a period of 3 years, using a range of empirical research approaches. The findings show that the studied interventions all target multiple deep leverage points within their target systems of production and consumption. All are limited in fulfilling their transformative potential by a range of barriers that we trace back to the economic and policy and regulation systems that they are embedded within. The economic system enforces a paradigm of consumption-based growth, and the policy and regulation system fails to either support change, or restrict unsustainable behaviours. Our findings demonstrate the need to think across systems scales to understand leverage points and transformative change; our nested systems approach is one way to do so. We outline two promising pathways for sustainability transformations: (1) focussing on how to create spillover effects of favourable interventions in sub-systems to push outwards against the constraints of the current policy and regulation, and economic systems; and (2) by targeting actors and interventions within the policy and regulation and economic systems to create change in the paradigms and design they embody and enforce on the systems nested within them.

Green … but at what cost? A typology and scale development of perceived green costs

Despite people's growing interest in eco-friendly products, there are still hesitations in action. People perceive costs around the purchase of environmentally friendly alternatives. The present study aims first to conceptualize and organize these green costs in a typology and then operationalize them in a measurement scale. Following the literature on measurement theory, the authors report the results of five studies in developing, purifying and validating the perceived green costs scale (Perceived Green Costs Scale: PGCS). The authors follow Churchill's paradigm for developing a measurement scale and complement it with a nomological validity analysis using Structural Equation Modeling. The typology of perceived green costs incorporates nine types of costs. The operationalization of this typology of costs brought forth nine first-order constructs, eight of which amount to a second-order construct: one-time switching costs (Switching Costs) and the remaining one represents repeated purchase costs (Purchase Costs). The Perceived Green Costs Scale demonstrates reliability of the measure, internal consistency and convergent and divergent validity. Furthermore, the Switching Costs construct confirms the Perceived Green Costs Scale's predictive validity by significantly predicting actual green purchase behavior. Interestingly, the Switching Costs display a significant mediating effect between green attitude and green behavior, extending the theory of planned behavior in a sustainable consumption context. The findings advance knowledge on the green behavioral gap and behavioral frictions in sustainable consumption and help identify the root cause of unsustainable behavior in hopes of eliminating it and designing better customer journeys towards eco-friendly purchases Further implications for brand managers, customer experience architects, educators and consumers are discussed in hopes of catalyzing change toward a more sustainable future.

A beacon of hope for a troubled Earth? A critical analysis of China’s authoritarian approach to constructing ‘ecological civilization’

The urgency of the ecological situation in the age of the Anthropocene has led to a call for concerted efforts across the globe. Disappointed at the liberal democracies’ environmental inaction, as evidenced in the political gridlock after attempts to compromise capitalists’ interests in overexploiting natural resources, or to limit individual freedom in engaging unsustainable behaviour, environmentalists are turning to more decisive state actions in combating environmental problems. In this field, arguably, China’s authoritarian approach to constructing ecological civilization is viewed as a beacon of hope by some environmental commentators. This article, after exploring the concepts of environmental authoritarianism and ecological civilization, demonstrates how the state-driven top-down construction of ecological civilization, exemplified by campaign-style enforcement and coercive enforcement, does not only fail to resolve ‘the tragedy of the commons’, but also results in ‘the tragedy of the ordinaries’. It further discusses implications for China’s construction of ecological civilization beyond the borders of China. The conclusion is reached that caution is demanded when using such a state-led authoritarian approach to addressing environmental problems on this troubled earth.

Impact of green factors on undergraduate students’ green behavioral intentions: A hybrid two-stage modeling approach

Consumers' unsustainable behavior contributes to environmental degradation and impedes sustainability. Using green products is one way to reduce this effect and promote environmental growth. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the green factors that impact young customers' behavioral intentions regarding green products. For this purpose, the researcher designed a research model based on the expanded theory of planned behavior (TPB). The study adopted a two-stage, hybrid model using partial least square-structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) and necessary condition analysis (NCA) to evaluate and validate the results. A sample of 382 undergraduate students was gathered using a convenience sampling approach. The results reveal that green TPB perception (GTP), green price sensitivity (GPS), green product trust (GPT), and green product value (GPV) are significantly and positively correlated with green behavioral intention (GBI). This study's main contribution is adding a brand-new higher-order construct, GTP, in the environmental and marketing literature and validating its effect on GBI. Again, environmental awareness moderates the association between GPS and GBI. Furthermore, the NCA's findings indicated that these variables are necessary to various degrees for students' GBI. Decision-makers may use the study's insights to create successful regulations to better understand young customers and develop appropriate green initiatives for sustainable development.

The Interplay Between Supply Chain Transparency and NGO Pressure: A Quantitative Analysis in the Fashion Industry Context

Companies have been experiencing increasing pressure from NGOs to overcome unethical and unsustainable behaviours. The purpose of this research was to study the interplay between supply chain transparency and NGO pressure. The analysis builds on the literature on supply chain transparency and institutional pressures. We conducted a time-lagged, multi-level regression analysis that included data from 270 fashion companies over a 5-year period to investigate the effect of NGO pressure on transparency and vice versa. The results revealed that companies with higher levels of transparency are more likely to be pressured by NGOs than less transparent companies. Furthermore, our findings show that, depending on the number of campaigns, NGO power and communication about campaigns, NGO pressure can either stimulate corporate transparency or turn into a negative effect that leads to lower levels of transparency.

Lifestyle, an integrative concept: Cross‐disciplinary insights for low‐carbon research

AbstractLifestyle change is a fundamental component of transformative pathways to net‐zero emissions. Despite the pervasive use of ‘lifestyle’ as a concept, there is lack of convergence on what constitutes lifestyle due to contrasting perspectives and approaches within and across disciplines. While there is a long tradition of lifestyle research in public health and in marketing, this does not currently inform low‐carbon lifestyle research. We review a wide range of empirical and theoretical lifestyle studies using a directed thematic approach. Focusing on current knowledge within low‐carbon lifestyles research, we draw insights from two contrasting research perspectives (health, marketing) to support and advance low‐carbon research. We argue that ‘lifestyle’ is a unifying meta‐concept comprised of three common integrating elements: behaviours, cognitions, and context. We find variation across research fields reflecting differing emphasis and differentiate integrative from domain‐specific frameworks. Fragmented approaches in low‐carbon research compartmentalise concepts within domains such that ‘lifestyle’ is aligned more closely in meaning to ‘behaviour’, accentuating inconsistencies. Lifestyle heterogeneity is characterised by clusters of cognitive and behavioural factors linked to broad social and material contexts. We identify drivers of lifestyle change, and argue lifestyle is not purely a matter of choice but shaped by contextual factors which lock‐in unsustainable behaviours or facilitate sustainable behaviours. There are important implications for research and intervention. Lifestyle complexities demand a wider analytical lens incorporating cross‐disciplinary datasets and integrative frameworks. Broadening cognitive and contextual dimensions would deepen understanding of lifestyle change. Comprehensive low‐carbon lifestyle interventions should combine multiple strategies, at‐risk groups, and opportunistic circumstance.This article is categorized under: Climate and Environment > Net Zero Planning and Decarbonization Human and Social Dimensions > Behavioral Science

The Comparative Effectiveness of Interventions Aimed at Making Tourists Behave in More Environmentally Sustainable Ways: A Meta-Analysis

Tourism generates 8% of all greenhouse gas emissions. One way of reducing emissions is to deploy behavioral change interventions that entice tourists to behave in more sustainable ways. In search of the most effective approaches, we conducted a meta-analysis of 118 interventions tested in field experiments in the tourism context. Most studies targeted beliefs and focused on towel reuse, food waste, or resource use. Changing choice architecture ( d = 1.40) and increasing pleasure ( d = 0.66) emerge as the most effective approaches. Imposing penalties for unsustainable behavior ( d = −0.12) and leveraging social norms to trigger sustainable behavior ( d = 0.18) have limited effectiveness. Future work should re-direct attention from designing interventions that modify beliefs toward interventions that change choice architecture or increase the pleasure associated with the desired behavior, and aim at changing a wider range of behaviors, including green transportation and the avoidance of single use plastics.

Multi-stakeholder partnerships for the SDGs: is the “next generation” fit for purpose?

Despite mixed results in the past, multi-stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) are considered important governance instruments for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. This perspective discusses the ‘next generation’ of MSPs, comparing them to previous generations, and whether they can contribute to transformative change. The discussion is based on a first analysis of nearly 500 MSPs collected in the Transformative Partnership 2030 project, comprising a subset of initiatives on the Partnership Platform maintained by the United Nations. Three observations are made. First, only a small number of the 7000 or so entries on the Partnership Platform are active MSPs. Second, international organizations and national government are the main partners in MSPs. The most common functions are related to soft governance such as knowledge dissemination and information exchange. Third, MSPs mainly connect environmental and social SDGs, notably between climate change, biodiversity, health and education. They are less focused on the economic goals, addressing the drivers of unsustainable behavior. The perspective recommends an update of the Partnership Platform, more research on how to harness potential synergies across SDGs in MSPs and more attention to meta-governance of MSPs, at the UN level.

“I should” Does Not Mean “I can.” Introducing Efficacy, Normative, and General Compensatory Green Beliefs

Compensatory green beliefs (CGBs) denote beliefs that unsustainable behaviours can be compensated for by performing other sustainable behaviours. We propose to differentiate between efficacy, normative, and general beliefs (ECGBs, NCGBs, GCGBs). ECGBs refer to effectively offsetting previous lapses. NCGBs denote feeling morally obliged to make amends. GCGBs refer to trading off unspecified efforts in overall consumption. Employing survey data from n = 502 high school graduates and an n = 145 longitudinal subsample, we find a three-factor structure of CGBs. ECGBs, NCGBs, and GCGBs intercorrelate moderately, indicating their status as different constructs. NCGBs are positively associated with pro-environmental values, self-identity, and social norms, whereas GCGBs are negatively associated with these constructs. CGBs, in particular NCGBs, have unique explanatory power for sustainable behaviours. NCGBs show substantial temporal stability over one year. CGBs need not be destructive, as NCGBs may encourage sustainable action. Persuasive messages could be tailored to specific CGBs in specific behavioural domains.

Strengthened public awareness of one health to prevent zoonosis spillover to humans

The COVID-19 outbreak has forced the world to rethink the interconnected health of humans and nature, i.e. One Health (OH). However, the current sector-technology-based solutions have a high cost. We propose a human-oriented One Health (HOH) concept to restrain the unsustainable behaviors of natural resource exploitation and consumption, which may trigger original zoonosis spillover from an imbalanced natural ecosystem. HOH can complement a nature-based solution (NBS), where the former refers to the unknown part of nature, while the latter is based on already known natural knowledge. Additionally, a systemic analysis of popular Chinese social media during the pandemic outbreak (January 1–March 31, 2020) revealed that the wide public was influenced by OH thought. In the post-pandemic era, it is time to deepen public awareness of HOH to guide the world onto a more sustainable track and prevent more serious zoonosis spillover in the future.

Taking risks

The climate catastrophe is a clarion call to humanity to change how we live. How do radical popular educators respond to this call? We ‘join the dots’ using climate justice, ecofeminism and our own insights from our engaged activist scholarship as theoretical positions to explore this question. Dominant Western worldviews which separate humans from other life forms contribute to ecological degradation. For climate justice, this hard-wired worldview needs to be disrupted. Drawing on multiple examples from Africa, we conclude that ways to do this require the foregrounding of cognitive justice which includes recognising the validity of multiple knowledges, learning from others and supporting communities’ in their struggles for reparation, reclamation and conservation of their land. These actions can be amplified in engagements which disrupt the unsustainable behaviour and policies of the wealthy. We argue that radical popular education in these times is climate just and ecofeminist.

Nexus between the Ethical Leadership and Green Innovation in the Hospitality Industry of Pakistan

Despite the apparent use for management, the personal values and ethical leadership that employees demonstrate towards innovation and commitment have not been utilized sufficiently to meet corporate environmental goals. An increasing number of firms are using this unified approach to their own green initiatives. Nonetheless, achieving this integration requires a considerable change in viewpoint on the part of the hospitality industry towards ethical issues, as well as a transformation in the unsustainable behaviors that employees of all levels may have developed over decades. So, this research aims to determine the relationship between employee green commitment, green innovation, and ethical leadership in the hospitality and tourism industry. The data was collected from 460 respondents through convenience sampling, a non-probability sampling technique, and analyzed by the SPSS process Macro. The result showed a positive relationship between ethical leadership, green innovation, and green commitment, whereas the mediation of green commitment enhances the effect of ethical leadership and green innovation. The study provides substantial impact for company leaders and managers on how to leverage green innovation to improve environmental performance and gain a competitive edge in their industries. Because stakeholders are increasingly expecting and demanding that businesses "go green" in everything they do, we feel that investing in environmental management is a prudent approach for organizations seeking to improve their consumer reputations.

Domestic energy-saving behavior index as sustainability indicator: Are Russians ready for sacrifices to protect the environment?

In recent years, it became clear that the human unsustainable behaviours’ impact on the environment. Environment protected behavior is especially relevant in the context of the current epidemiological situation ushered by the COVID-19. Environmental awareness is becoming a part of everyday life. The time has come when it is necessary to sacrifice the comfort for the future of the planet. This study primarily focuses on the attitudes of residents of a typical Russian industrial city towards environmental issues and the use of the Energy-Saving Behavior Index (ESBI) as an environmental indicator of sustainable behavior. Our work investigates ESBI and the factors which are associated with domestic energy-saving behavior. We surveyed 599 people in Chelyabinsk, Russia. We studied (1) the socio-demographic factors of residents and their households, (2) mental health and subjective well-being (SWB), and (3) physical health. The study showed that the overwhelming majority of residents of a typical Russian city are extremely dissatisfied with the state of the environment (more than 80% of respondents) and 70% of them believe that they can contribute to improving the situation. However, Russians are still wasteful in household energy consumption. It has been shown that unstable behavior is due to psychological factors and has a compensatory mechanism that is connected with the “feelings-emotions-behavior” sequence. • Energy-saving behavior index is an environmental indicator of social sustainability. • Respondent's employment status, home size and having financial dependents correlate with the energy-saving behavior index, while their gender and age do not. • Compensatory mechanism has a great effect on formation of Russian residents' habits in domestic energy consumption. • People's comfort greatly influences their energy-saving behavior.

Household food waste disposal behaviour is driven by perceived personal benefits, recycling habits and ability to compost

Households are responsible for a large proportion of total food waste and are an important focal point for addressing food waste disposal issues. Determinants of household food waste minimisation behaviour have been previously explored; however, little is known about the determinants of household food waste disposal behaviour. Several food waste disposal options are available to households, depending on context, with some disposal practices being more sustainable than others. This study applies the food waste hierarchy to household food waste disposal behaviour and identifies three sustainable food waste disposal behaviours (sorting food waste into the green organics bin, reusing food waste for animal feed, and home composting); and three unsustainable behaviours (disposing of food waste in the general waste bin, the recycling bin, and/or the sink). Using data from a survey of 1027 respondents, a fractional multinomial logit model is used to analyse the associations between explanatory variables and sustainable versus unsustainable household food waste disposal behaviour. Having a kitchen caddy is associated with increased sustainable food waste disposal behaviour (higher proportion of food waste diverted to the green bin and composted). Key factors that drive households' use of kerbside green organics bins are perceived personal costs and benefits, and recycling habits. Importantly, environmental self-identity is positively associated with home composting practices. Factors associated with a higher proportion of food waste disposed of in the general waste bin (unsustainable behaviour) include stronger perceived inconvenience of using the green bin, living in a unit, and having a higher household income. Findings from this study can provide insight into interventions to promote more sustainable household food waste disposal practices.