With a rapidly growing world population and the need to address the issue of consumption of global resource and its associated environmental impacts and other social and economic issues, the demand for a responsible consumption, production and prevention of waste generation become increasingly crucial. With this broad characterization of Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP), businesses based on circular economy should become the norm. With this goal in mind, an online questionnaire survey was performed on a nationwide scale, to explore consumers' behaviors and attitudes. It was distributed in all four of Romania's macro-regions and reached 642 respondents. The purpose of the study has been to better understand consumers' behavior regarding sustainable consumption and production and examine whether generations play a role in responsible consumer attitudes toward the products. Three generations (X, Y, and Z) have been examined and compared. The results show that what extent those three generation agree with the environment and the benefits of reducing resource consumption, also waste generation, selective collection, recycling and reuse. However, most of them have not adopted and do not intend to adopt consumer patterns based on the circular economy. The findings provide empirical evidence and directions that could help marketers identify their consumer's characteristics and market segments and develop consumer empowerment strategies on the Romanian market.

Abstract:The aim of this paper is to investigate consumer behavior regarding the environment and the adoption of new patterns of behavior and responsible consumption in the promotion of a Circular Economy (CE) in Romania. With this goal in mind, a questionnaire survey was performed on-line on a nationwide scale to explore consumers' behaviors and attitudes, which was distributed in all four of Romania's macro-regions and interviewing 642 respondents. The results indicate that the consumers have a positive attitude towards the importance of the environmental protection, in general and it also measures the frequency of adopting eco-friendly behaviors by the consumers, showing that the consumption behavior is not very consistent with the general attitude regarding environment. As a parallel, consumers are aware of the importance of CE business models, in general, both for the economy and for the environment, but the adoption of consumption patterns specific to CE business models, necessary for the development and the success of the CE business models, has a low probability in the absence of direct or indirect incentives and benefits fostering the adoption of these consumption patterns. In conclusion, the development of CE business models in Romania requires a national strategy, which includes means to sustain the adoption of necessary new consumption behaviors, besides awareness raising and educational campaigns for explaining to consumers the liaison and the impact of their behavior to the environment and to the economy.

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