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Sustainable consumption dilemmas
Vringer,Kees van der Heijden,Eline van Soest,Daan Vollebergh,Herman Dietz,Frank
Vringer,Kees
van der Heijden,Eline
van Soest,Daan
Vollebergh,Herman
Dietz,Frank
Abstract
To examine which considerations play a role when individuals make decisions to purchase sustainable product varieties or not, we have conducted a large scale field experiment with more than 600 participating households. Households can vote on whether the budgets they receive should only be spent on purchasing the sustainable product variety, or whether every household in a group is free to spend their budget on any product variety. By conducting several treatments, we tested whether people tend to view sustainable consumption as a social dilemma or as a moral dilemma. We find little support for the hypothesis that social dilemma considerations are the key drivers of sustainable consumption behaviour. Participants seem to be caught in a moral dilemma in which they not only weigh their individual financial costs with the sustainable benefits but they also consider the consequences of restricting other people’s freedom of choice. Complementary survey results further substantiate this claim and show that many people are reluctant to impose restrictions on their peers, but, at the same time, our results also suggest substantial support for the government to regulate the availability of unsustainable product varieties.
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Date
2017-06
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Keywords
sustainable consumption, field experiment, social dilemma, moral dilemma, SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production
Citation
Vringer, K, van der Heijden, E, van Soest, D, Vollebergh, H & Dietz, F 2017, 'Sustainable consumption dilemmas', Sustainability, vol. 9, no. 6, 942. https://doi.org/10.3390/su9060942