The Relationship Between Consumer Behavior and Sustainable Practices

Abstract

One of the major developments in the current discourse on the environment is the realization of the impact of consumer behavior on the sustainability of the environment. As one of the principal aims of pursuing sustainability is to appeal the environment as viable in the long-term, hence the concern on how to introduce or encourage sustainable consumer behavior. However, it is essential to first explore consumer motivations and behavior with a view to thereafter enhancing and introducing pro-sustainable behaviors. The task of comparing price, performance, and energy label criteria when buying a mobile telephone can be a tedious, time consuming, and sometimes a confusing process. There are a valid environmental or green dimension of consumer behavior, that exploration of this dimension has come up significantly lately, and that this espousal of green consumer behavior has entered policy agendas in the U.K. There are insights derived from this analysis, which might inform changes in consumer behavior that might engender sustainability. Why is it that UK consumers are only willing to intermit to trading in/out a mobile every one and two years, respectively, when there seems to be no rational point in such intermission in terms of seeking to satisfy the aforesaid referential needs? Automatic updates of handset technology every two years have been driven by the lucrative consumer contracts mobile companies operate. These contracts offer free mobiles replaced every subsequent year of the contract, which are alluring to consumers, but end up costing them in the region of £500 more than standard pre-paid contracts at the end of the contract. However, when mobile companies started introducing cameras, music players, and the ability to send picture-messages on handsets in the later to mid-2000s, they ran out of readily imaginable consumable ‘lifestyle’ leads for new applications. And so, despite colossal leaps in technology thereafter, only as yet ‘gimmick’ applications rather than new habitual lifestyle applications have been developed. Amongst this backdrop of find and understanding findings, therefore, it would seem fitting for the U.K. Government to restrict the current consumer contract arrangements of mobile companies to update and offer free handsets every two years, as this would inevitably assist in engendering more sustainable habits amongst UK mobile phone consumers in the UK.

Keywords consumer behavior, sustainable practices, environmental impact, green consumerism, motivation, sustainability, mobile technology, policy change