Understanding the lifestyle of health and sustainability – an exploratory study

The goal of this paper is to study the psychographic and demographic attributes and the interests of lifestyle of health and sustainability (LOHAS) consumers. Based on a dataset of 3,813 user profiles from the largest LOHAS community site on Facebook, we applied association rule mining and logistic regression to achieve this goal. We focused our work on applying the collaborative innovation network (COIN) concept to the LOHAS consumer. Results show that LOHAS consumers have a strong spiritual attitude and a general interest in outdoor and fitness activities such as hiking, gardening, and yoga. Finally, we provide a description of a LOHAS consumer profile archetype and compare our findings to existing work.

[1]  Lau Teck Chai,et al.  Attitude towards the Environment and Green Products:Consumers’ Perspective , 2010 .

[2]  Juliet Memery,et al.  Ethical and social responsibility issues in grocery shopping: a preliminary typology , 2005 .

[3]  R. Dahl,et al.  Green Washing , 2010, Environmental health perspectives.

[4]  Danah Boyd,et al.  Social network sites: definition, history, and scholarship , 2007, IEEE Engineering Management Review.

[5]  C. Y. Peng,et al.  An Introduction to Logistic Regression Analysis and Reporting , 2002 .

[6]  MotwaniRajeev,et al.  Beyond market baskets , 1997 .

[7]  Marsha A. Dickson,et al.  Socially responsible behaviour: values and attitudes of the alternative trading organisation consumer , 1996 .

[8]  R. Calantone,et al.  Psychographic Segmentation of Tourists , 1978 .

[9]  Sigmund A. Wagner,et al.  Understanding Green Consumer Behaviour: A Qualitative Cognitive Approach , 1997 .

[10]  James A. Roberts Green consumers in the 1990s: Profile and implications for advertising , 1996 .

[11]  Chin‐Feng Lin,et al.  Segmenting customer brand preference: demographic or psychographic , 2002 .

[12]  Thomas A. Arcury,et al.  Sex differences in environmental concern and knowledge: The case of acid rain , 1987 .

[13]  Eric G. Olson Business as environmental steward: the growth of greening , 2009 .

[14]  Tomasz Imielinski,et al.  Mining association rules between sets of items in large databases , 1993, SIGMOD Conference.

[15]  Rudolf R. Sinkovics,et al.  Can socio-demographics still play a role in profiling green consumers? A review of the evidence and an empirical investigation , 2003 .

[16]  Arminda M. Finisterra do Paço,et al.  Identifying the green consumer: A segmentation study , 2009 .

[17]  Heikki Mannila,et al.  Finding interesting rules from large sets of discovered association rules , 1994, CIKM '94.

[18]  Detlef Schoder,et al.  Finding collaborative innovation networks through correlating performance with social network structure , 2008 .

[19]  Mary A. Littrell,et al.  Marketing Cultural Products on the Internet: Targeting Cultural Creatives , 2006 .

[20]  Clare D'Souza,et al.  Green Decisions: Demographics and Consumer Understanding of Environmental Labels , 2007 .

[21]  W. Wells Psychographics: A Critical Review , 1975 .