Environmental Sustainability: A Consumers ’ Perspective

Environmental sustainability (ES) from a consumer perspective refers to four behavior dimensions: 1. Consumers purchasing less of: unrecycled goods (e.g., gasoline motored cars) and more of recycled substitutes (e.g., battery-motored cars), environmentally unfriendly goods (e.g., paper communications) and more of environmentally friendly substitutes (e.g., electronic communications), goods with environmentally unfriendly packaging (e.g., orange juice in plastic bottles) and more goods with environmentally friendly packaging (e.g., refillable containers), and goods that consume much energy (e.g., gas guzzler cars) and more goods that consume less energy (e.g., economy cars); 2. Consumers consuming less material and energy goods (e.g., decreasing consumer spending and using less heat in the winter months and less air conditioning in the summer months); 3. Consumers enhancing the longevity of their material possessions by maintaining and repairing them instead of disposing and purchasing new ones (e.g., repairing one’s car instead of trading it in for a new one); and 4. Consumers disposing of their material possessions in environmentally friendly ways (e.g., recycling most of their throwaways). Available Outcome Measure