Consumers' Green Commitment: Indication of a Postmodern Lifestyle?

Green consumer behaviour is one of the key focuses of contemporary research on the sociology of consumption. The constant presence of environmental issues related to consumption and the changes consumer society has faced during the 20th century are presumed to reflect on present consumer behaviour. The focus of this paper is twofold: first, the postmodern elements of consumer society will be discussed; second, the study analyses to what extent these elements of postmodernism fit with the phenomenon of contemporary green consumerism. The empirical part utilizes Finnish consumer behaviour-related data from 2003, which were analysed by applying various statistical methods. In this part, the study reports of the connection between lifestyle and green commitment. Lifestyle is measured by consumption styles and green commitment by certain environment-related consumption choices. The results suggest that different lifestyles explain green commitment better than traditional socio-economic background variables. The effect of postmodernism on green consumer behaviour is, thus, discussed.

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