Towards a personology of sustainable consumers: an application of Personal Projects Analysis

Abstract

Profiling the sustainable consumer has proven an elusive task. Altruist values have been so far the construct that have better differentiated between sustainable and non-sustainable consumers. With the aim of enriching the personology of sustainable consumption, this paper uses the personal projects (PP hereafter) analysis and examines its explicative ability of a sustainable lifestyle, compared to values. It is argued that PP should be more explicative than values for two reasons. First, although defined at the intersection between goals and personality, they are closer to behavior than values; second, PP acknowledge that we continuously negotiate our identities with our context. Personal project analysis is applied in an exploratory study with 103 adults. Results show that the formulation of PP predict better than altruist values the adoption of sustainable consumption.

Profiling the sustainable consumer has proven an elusive task. Altruist values have been so far the construct that have better differentiated between sustainable and non-sustainable consumers. With the aim of enriching the personology of sustainable consumption, this paper uses the personal projects (PP hereafter) analysis and examines its explicative ability of a sustainable lifestyle, compared to values. It is argued that PP should be more explicative than values for two reasons. First, although defined at the intersection between goals and personality, they are closer to behavior than values; second, PP acknowledge that we continuously negotiate our identities with our context. Personal project analysis is applied in an exploratory study with 103 adults. Results show that the formulation of PP predict better than altruist values the adoption of sustainable consumption.