CLIMACT Seminar Series - Pierre Kohler & Pia Furchheim

­Sustainability has arrived in the middle of society. More and more consumers try to be sustainable and consider sustainability as an important purchasing criterion. While the increased awareness is a positive trend, sustainable behavior does not translate into all areas of living/consumption. This resonates with the ongoing challenge of the so-called Attitude-Behavior Gap.
Despite its social and environmental relevance, sustainability is oftentimes limited to selected areas of life. While it is easy for us to be sustainable in some areas (e.g. food) and we are even willing to pay a premium price for the sustainable product, we find it more difficult to walk the talk in other areas (e.g. consumer electronics, travel).
The presentation aims to spark the discussion about how consumers make consumption choices and what role sustainability plays in various decisions. Considering that the consumption of products/services can offer multiple forms of value to the consumer (e.g. economic, social, hedonic, altruistic, etc.), one could approach the topic from a net-benefit point of view. When making decisions, we usually choose the option that promises the greatest benefit (e.g economic, social, hedonic, altruistic, etc.). Notwithstanding a consumer’s general attitude towards sustainability, the importance he/she ascribes to sustainability in different consumption situations might vary. This understanding is important for companies offering sustainable alternatives as it demonstrates that emphasizing sustainable features might be beneficial in some domains, while this approach might fail in other domains.