Insecure Employment and Pro-Environmental Consumption: An empirical Analysis

Abstract

Pro-environmental consumption is one element of the behavioral change that is necessary to ensure sustainability. It is well known that consumption patterns differ according to socioeconomic status in general and that pro-environmental consumption behavior is affected by, among others, people's gender, education and current income. However, relatively few studies have tried to link pro-environmental consumption and socioeconomic characteristics beyond these well-known correlations. We aim to contribute to this literature by looking at the effects of the growing employment insecurity on pro-environmental consumption. Therefore we first review the literature on the effects of insecure employment and develop our hypotheses on the effects on purchase of organic food (as an example of pro-environmental consumption). Employing data from the German SocioEconomic Panel, we show that employment insecurity negatively affects frequency of organic food purchase, as well as perceived freedom of choice and attitudes toward organic food purchase. Our results thus hint at direct and indirect effects of insecurity on pro-environmental consumption behavior. The policy conclusion is that any strategy for sustainable development needs to include social policy in order to enable behavioral change.