'Mid-Life Greenness': Environmental Consciousness among European Consumers

Identifying characteristics of green consumers has proven to be a complex undertaking for many researchers and no clear consensus yet exists. This is particularly true of the effect of age on awareness of environmental effects. My aim in this study is to model the relationship between age and environmental consciousness using a large sample of over twenty six thousand respondents in 28 countries to a specially designed survey requested by the European Commission. I use the 2009 Flash Eurobarometer survey (no. 256) designed to address European attitudes towards sustainable consumption. I choose six questions from the survey in order to capture measures of environmental knowledge, attitudes and behaviour. Using multiple regression analysis, I test for the influence of age on environmental consciousness after controlling for gender, education level, occupation and urban vs. rural residence. The results reveal an interesting ‘inverse U’ shape of environmental consciousness by age for both men and women implying that environmental consciousness peaks at middle age. Extending the regression into multilevel modelling, allows me to test for variations in the inverse U shape across countries of Europe. The results indicate country level variations in both the level and shape of the curve from one country to another. Although similar in many countries, caution is required in making gross generalisations about age related sustainable consumption patterns in Europe as a whole.