Advancing Sustainable Consumption in Korea and Japan—From Re-Orientation of Consumer Behavior to Civic Actions

Abstract

With sustainability being one of the most common issues facing consumers and society today, this paper explores the status of sustainable consumption in Korea and Japan—societies expected to drive the changes pertaining to sustainable consumption in Asia. Although Korea and Japan have been implementing sustainability-related policies, there is still room for development of sustainability in terms of consumers’ participation. As sustainable consumption is defined as consumers’ environmental decision-making process, which requires cognitive efforts, it is necessary to understand individual’s sustainable consumption based on the conceptual model of behavior, in order to encourage the adoption of more sustainable consumer practices. Being grounded in the revised Theory of Reasoned Action, which adds consumers’ awareness, pro-environmental self-identity, and descriptive norm, this study contributes to a better empirical understanding of the factors that underlie sustainable consumption behaviors with respect to social-cognitive viewpoint. By involving a survey of Korean and Japanese respondents’ awareness, descriptive norm, practical behavior to 47 specific activities, as well as attitude and pro-environmental self-identity, the study works on two levels: on one level, it is a study of sustainability-related consumer activities and behaviors in Korea and Japan; on another level, it identifies key variables to explain sustainable consumption behavior through hierarchical regression analysis. The results show that among the numerous sectors requiring prioritized expansion of sustainable consumption, the area of consumer citizenship has received relatively little publicity. Another important finding is that the failure to practically engage in sustainability-related activities by consumers cannot simply be attributed to knowledge deficit, as consumers in both countries appropriately recognize sustainable consumption. Our results clearly illustrate that consumers perform sustainable consumption behavior based mostly on socially shared connotations—the descriptive norm—while the other key variables affecting sustainable consumption are awareness, and pro-environmental self-identity. However, we also observed that there is no significant effect on attitude, indicating that even a favorable attitude toward performing sustainability-related activities does not directly translate into actual behavior. This paper shows how consumer perceptions of the normality of environmentally friendly behaviors can be used for the design of strategies to promote sustainable consumption in Korean and Japanese societies. In addition, we provide practical guidelines for the expansion of sustainable consumption tailored for the characteristics of each society.

COVID-19 Drives Consumer Behaviour and Agro-Food Markets towards Healthier and More Sustainable Patterns

“…Since consumers are the final link in food supply chains, they influence food systems through their own food choices and eating habits [30]. Thus, the phenomenon of food consumption has the potential to substantially influence the environment, the economy, and the well-being of society [30][31][32][33]. Indeed, as the global population grows to occupy urban spaces, thereby creating additional demand for agricultural production, sustainability issues relating to the food sector arise; some of these include the industrialization of agriculture, the globalization of the agri-food trade, the increasing intake of animal protein in Western diet patterns, the spread of eating habits involving increasingly processed products, and increasing food wastage.…”

“…Consumers can play an important role in the transition towards more sustainable food consumption patterns [32]-through planning food purchase, storage, preparation, and food consumption [64]. Even general cooking skills have been mentioned in the debate about minimizing food wastage, as having only a basic competence in this field can lead to poorly cooked food and hence increased food wastage [65].…”

Shopping with perceived benefits of sustainable consumption in online resale platforms

“…Diversified shopping platforms have been adopted across product categories, including clothes, shoes, books, electronics and vehicles (Chen et al, 2020;Hollenbacher and Yerger, 2001;Zhao et al, 2013). Today, more customers are showing interest in sustainable consumption (B alan, 2021;Bilharz and Schmitt, 2011;Gojard and V eron, 2018), which is associated with energy conservation, organic purchasing, fair trade and the reuse of products (Lim et al, 2019;Park and Lin, 2018). In this sense, resale platforms can help customers experience sustainable purchasing by maximizing the productivity of resources through recycling, reusing and conserving materials.…”

Influencia de la religiosidad, la norma subjetiva y la efectividad percibida del consumidor en el consumo socialmente responsable

“…El surgimiento de este concepto se presentó en la década de los sesenta para contrarrestar la visión del consumo normal, el cual puede ser entendido como la conciencia social de un individuo (Suárez et al, 2020) que tiene en cuenta las consecuencias públicas de su consumo privado como una construcción psicológica de participación social, donde, a través del poder adquisitivo, se pretende lograr un cambio en la sociedad, atendiendo su preocupación por los problemas sociales y ambientales (Lim et al, 2019), conocidos principalmente gracias a los movimientos medioambientalistas de la época (Webster, 1975).…”