Consumer barriers to sustainability--多伦多Essay代写作业

多伦多Essay代写作业:“Consumer barriers to sustainability”，这篇论文主要描述的是地球人口的增加与工业经济的发展，严重破坏了地球原有的生态平衡系统，人们想要保持着一种可持续发展的循环经济，那么首先就需要改变人们现有的生产方式和消费方式，建立起一种可持续的消费模式，既符合了经济发展的需求，也减少了人们对于环境的破坏。

Population growth and economic development result in increasingly serious damage to the environment and ecological systems. Martin and Schouten (2012) note, the earth is the material basis and a necessary condition for human survival and sustainable social and economic development. The damage caused by people’s inappropriate social and economic activities towards the earth's environment will affect or endanger the future survival and development of mankind. To this end sustainable development has been paid more and more attention by governments and academics, as well as consumers. Sustainable development requires changes in people’s business model, production methods, consumption behavior, lifestyle and other aspects (Brown, 2011), of which sustainable consumption pattern is an important part of sustainable development.

Sustainable consumption means that to meet the development needs of consumption, contemporary people can not exceed the limit of carrying capacity of environment, consumption should be conducive to environmental protection and ecological balance (Belz and Peattie, 2009). There are many barriers in reality that exist to persuade people to consume sustainably, resulting in a variety of over-consumption, conspicuous consumption, unrealistically comparative consumption behavior, such consumption behavior has increased the extent of consumption of resources and environmental damage (Grauerholz and Bubriski-McKenzie, 2012; Fien, Neil and Bentley, 2008 ). Exploring and analyzing what barriers that exist to persuade people to consume sustainably help governments and relevant agencies to develop appropriate policies and institutions to guide consumers to consume sustainably, it also helps businesses to develop proper marketing strategies to stimulate consumers to consume sustainably. This essay reviews relevant literatures, sums up which barriers that exist to persuade people to consume sustainably. Then it carries out a critical analysis on the literatures to point out the directions of further study.

1.0 Barriers

1.1 Reputation

Griskevicius et al. (2010) were through the study on pro-social behavior to point out that in addition to altruism, the aim of consumers’ buying green products is to get a good reputation and recognition of others, because the purchase of green products can establish the image of protection of environment for consumers. Therefore, in public, consumers prefer to buy green products, but in private occasions, consumer demand for green products is declining, because the purchase of green products in non-public occasions will not bring consumers good reputation. Thus fame can be seen as one of the barriers that prevent people to consume sustainably (Griskevicius et al., 2010).

1.2 Price and social status

Autio and Heinonen (2004) consider that prices of green products are usually higher than the prices of non-green products, because green products contain more scientific and technical content, the manufacturing process is more complex. Because of high prices, some consumers will choose non-green products. However, Griskevicius et al. (2010) also give opposite interpretation, they were through position theory to explain the behavior characteristics of people’s buying green products. They interpret that when prices for green products are higher, consumer demand for green products is higher, and when the prices for green products are lower, consumer demand for green products is lower, because the purchase of green products of high prices can reflect consumers’ concern for environmental protection, it can also reflect that consumers have enough money, so that to show a higher social status of consumers. The purchase of green products of low prices will not be able to bring consumers a high social status, thus the demand for them declines (Griskevicius et al., 2010). Therefore, prices and social status can be seen as the barriers that prevent people to consume sustainably.

1.3 Culture

1.4 Tax

Brown (2011) analyzes that reforming tax system is a way to achieve sustainable economic development, the reform specifically includes reducing personal income tax and raising the tax on carbon emissions. The reason for why he puts forward the view lies in that taxes have a significant impact on people’s consuming sustainably, governments bring products which will consume a lot of energy and resources, as well as easily lead to environmental pollution into the scope of taxation, which can narrow the price gap between high pollution, high energy consumption products and energy saving products to guide consumers to choose more environmentally friendly products and restrain the consumption of high pollution, high energy consumption products (Meng, Siriwardana and McNeill, 2014). And when a government's tax system on green products is unreasonable, it will hinder consumers to buy green products. For example, if the consumption tax towards products of high consumption of energy resources and products which can easily lead to environmental pollution is not high enough, it will unable to narrow the price gap between high pollution, high energy consumption products and saving and environmental protection products, and it can not lead consumers to choose more environmentally friendly products (Gale and Brown, 2013). Therefore, tax system can be seen as one of the barriers that go against people’s consuming sustainably.

1.5 Consumption habit

Consumption habit is a kind of consuming need that consumers maintain for long towards certain types of goods or a certain brand, it is an individual stable consumption behavior, it is accumulated slowly in people’s long-term life. Performance of consumption habit includes consumers’ preference for certain commodities and consumers’ preference for brands of certain goods, as well as consumers’ preference for certain consumption behavior patterns (Spaargaren and Vliet 2000). As economy develops and the extent of wealth increases, excessive consumption becomes consumption habit of consumers in some developed countries. Such as in the U.S. , many consumers buy new cars frequently, they are eager to drive large swept volume cars, live in big houses and so on. Vale and Vale (2013) highlight that the amount of resources consumed by consumers in developed countries accounts for the vast majority of the world's total consumption of resources. Excessive consumption leads to a waste of resources, it increases resource damage and it is not conducive to sustainable development, it badly affects social harmony and consumption in terms of offspring’s survival rights, which are consumption habits that should be curbed (Lee et al., 2012).

Excessive consumption is the consumption that is beyond people’s legitimate needs. This consumption consumes more resources, it is essentially just to meet some unreasonable social and psychological needs. Excessive consumption can bring enterprises extra profits. However, for the sustainable development of the whole of human society, its disadvantages are more than its advantages (Grauerholz and Bubriski-McKenzie, 2012). In summary, consumption habit is also the barriers that exist to persuade people to consume sustainably.

2.0 Discussion

Overall, these five barriers relating to persuading people to consume sustainably are concerned with economic factors. Firstly, starting with a reputation perspective, some consumers generally hope to purchase green products with higher prices to gain a good reputation, while privately they do not want to pay more to buy green products, because it will not bring them a good reputation (Griskevicius et al., 2010). Secondly, considering from price and social status, whether the prices of green products are high or low, they will affect people’s consuming sustainably (Griskevicius et al., 2010). Thirdly, judging from a cultural point of view, consumers with different cultural backgrounds have different attitudes towards green products, which is closely related to their economic income levels. Consumers in the areas with lower levels of economic development often have less environmental consciousness, they more accept companies and products causing pollution (Th?gersen, 2010). Fourthly, from a tax point of view, the tax has an impact on people’s consuming sustainably mainly by regulating the prices of green products. Finally, in terms of Consumption habit, consumers from developed countries such as the United States are easier to form habits of excessive consumption. This is mainly because on the one hand their prices of oil , automobiles and other products are lower than the prices of these products in developing countries, on the other hand, incomes of consumers in developed countries are indeed higher than incomes of consumers in other countries (Grauerholz and Bubriski-McKenzie, 2012). Therefore, to develop measures from an economic point of view is the most important for eliminating barriers that exist to persuade people to consume sustainably. That is, it is through appropriate policies to affect the prices of green products, making the prices are consistent with the psychological needs, social status, income levels of consumers, so as to better promote sustainable consumption behavior of consumers. However, it is worth noting that each barrier is different, more targeted measures are also need to solve each of them.

From a reputation perspective, through the purchase of green products, consumers want to get the recognition and respect of others to obtain psychological satisfaction (Griskevicius et al., 2010). To remove barriers brought by reputation for people to consume sustainably, it can consider increasing the identification of appearance and packaging of green products, allowing consumers to easily distinguish green and non-green products. For example, it can make a unified use of green packaging, enlarging the size of green labels. Thus even if consumers buy green products in private, they can easily be recognized by other consumers, so that the consumers who buy green products can get the reputation that they need (Sutcliffe, Hooper and Howell, 2008). In terms of price and social status, to eliminate the impact of barriers brought by them, it needs to develop different pricing policies for different products. For green products which target at general consumers such as daily necessities, food and so on, in pricing, the prices for these green products can not be much high than the prices of non-green products of these types (Griskevicius et al., 2010). For green products aiming at consumers with strong purchasing power such as automobile, in pricing, it can properly maintain a large price gap between green and non-green products, allowing consumers who buy the green products to get the social status that they need (Connolly and Prothero, 2008). From a cultural point of view, to eliminate the impact of the barrier requires the joint efforts of government and enterprises. First of all, government should enact laws to protect local environment, limiting enterprises’ behavior of polluting the environment, providing local enterprises with financial support to help them with eliminating backward equipment and mode of production (Holt, 2012). Enterprises should use a variety of marketing ways to strengthen promotion of the benefits of green products, training environmental consciousness of local consumers’ (Hartmann and Apaolaza-Ibá?ez, 2008). As far as tax system is concerned, to get rid of the negative impact brought by this barrier, government need to reform tax system, including increasing carbon tax, reducing income tax, etc., which can guide consumers to buy green products, avoid the living and consumer behavior which are not eco-friendly, while it will not increase consumers’ spending and cost of living (Brown, 2011; Th?gersen, 2010). Considering from consumption habit, once a consumption habit forms, it is difficult to be changed, to eliminate the impact of consumption habit on consuming sustainably, companies can adopt green marketing methods (Sarkar, 2012). In operation and production process, enterprises should unify their own interests, consumers’ interests and environmental interests as a center, based on this to conceive, design, sell and manufacture products and services (Sarkar, 2012). Specific measures include building green brand, developing green product, sales promotion of green products, logistics of green products, by green marketing to help consumers to form sustainable buying habits (Sarkar, 2012).

3.0 Conclusion

The importance of sustainable consumption in modern society has been paid more and more attention by governments and academics, as well as ordinary consumers. However, in reality, there are many barriers exist to persuade people to consume sustainably. In this essay, the author conducted a review of relevant studies to find that these barriers include reputation, price and social status, culture, tax and consumption habit. It is noteworthy that research in this essay is just from certain aspect to study the barriers that affect people to consume sustainably, it fails to specify which barriers are more important. In reality, in the process of buying green products, consumers usually simultaneously encounter multiple barriers. Therefore it is necessary to study in further research that when there are two or more barriers existing together, which barrier(s) may have more impact on persuading people to consume sustainably.

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