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“How do I carry all this now?”: understanding consumer resistance to sustainability interventions
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Sandberg, Jörgen (2021) “How do I carry all this now?”: understanding consumer resistance to sustainability interventions. Journal of Marketing, 85 (3). pp. 44-61. doi:10.1177/0022242921992052
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242921992052
Abstract
Given the increasingly grave environmental crisis, governments and organizations frequently initiate sustainability interventions to encourage sustainable behavior in individual consumers. However, prevalent behavioral approaches to sustainability interventions often have the unintended consequence of generating consumer resistance and undermining their effectiveness. With a practice-theoretical perspective, the authors investigate what generates consumer resistance and how it can be reduced, using consumer responses to a nationwide ban on plastic bags in Chile in 2019. The findings show that consumer resistance to sustainability interventions emerges not primarily because consumers are unwilling to change their individual behavior, as commonly assumed by existing literature. Instead, consumer resistance emerges because the individual behaviors being targeted are embedded in dynamic social practices. When sustainability interventions aim to change individual behaviors, rather than social practices, they place excessive responsibility on consumers, unsettle their practice-related emotionality, and destabilize the multiple practices that interconnect to shape consumers’ lives, ultimately leading to resistance. The authors propose a theory of consumer resistance in social practice change that explains why consumer resistance to sustainability interventions emerges, including how it distracts, discourages, and delays the required social practice change. They also offer recommendations for policymakers and social marketers in designing and managing sustainability initiatives that trigger less consumer resistance and therefore foster sustainable consumer behavior.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
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| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HB Economic Theory H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HF Commerce H Social Sciences > HM Sociology T Technology > TD Environmental technology. Sanitary engineering |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences > Warwick Business School | ||||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Consumer behavior, Social change, Sustainable development , Green technology , Consumption (Economics) -- Environmental aspects | ||||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Marketing | ||||||||
| Publisher: | Sage Publications Ltd. | ||||||||
| ISSN: | 0022-2429 | ||||||||
| Official Date: | 1 May 2021 | ||||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 85 | ||||||||
| Number: | 3 | ||||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 44-61 | ||||||||
| DOI: | 10.1177/0022242921992052 | ||||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
| Publisher Statement: | Posted ahead of print. Sandberg, Jörgen (2021) “How do I carry all this now?”: understanding consumer resistance to sustainability interventions, Journal of Marketing (Journal Volume Number and Issue Number) pp. xx-xx. Copyright © 2021 (The Authors). Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications. DOI: [DOI] | ||||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
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