Understanding Consumers Behaviour – a Further Step Towards Greener and Sustainable Consumption

Every day millions of consumer decisions are made which have a worldwide impact. Despite the expansion of green consumption in western countries the negative impact of private consumption and purchasing behaviour of consumers on global working conditions, the consumption of resources and the supply of goods is great and continues to increase.

Individual consumption and the purchase of green products are influenced by many factors and show big variety between individuals, even within the same age, income and work status in the spatial scope. Understanding these differences is important for developing new green products, programs and policy concepts to promote a socially responsible and sustainable consumption.

Sociology assumes that it is possible to describe and explain behavioural differences with features of social inequality. Research into social stratification in modern societies has shown that the complexity of social activities cannot be explained by socio demographic and socio-economic variables alone. Attitudinal variables resp. lifestyle- and milieu-based approaches have thus finally been introduced in order to explain and understand individual behaviour and consumption more in depth, and to segment the population into meaningful (target) groups (e.g. market research). Although none of the approaches can claim absolute superiority, attitudinal based approaches show advantages in providing a step further towards greener and sustainable consumption.

This contribution explains theoretically why a differentiated view of consumers is important and gives an overview of various segmentation approaches. A case study in Vienna compares different approaches of segmentation and significance of attitudinal-based approaches for the explanation and understanding of green consumption in the field of residential energy consumption and mobility behaviour.