Sustainable Consumption Behaviour in Colombia: An Exploratory Analysis

Abstract

Sustainable consumption has positioned itself as an alternative for economic growth and social development because of its ability to deal with the future scarcity of natural resources and the prevention and mitigation of climate change, among other things. In this sense, the role of the consumer is preponderant, due to the fact their consumption behaviour has a direct effect on the environment; hence the importance of analysing their habits from different perspectives and social realities. Accordingly, the aim of this work is to explore the low-impact sustainable consumption behaviour in Colombia and the convergence and divergence of this type of consumer behaviour in the country. To achieve this, an exploratory, quantitative, and transversal methodology was used. The latter was based on a sample of 393 consumers to whom a self-report scale was applied in order to evaluate behaviours linked to quality of life, care for the environment, and resources for future generations. With the data collected, the following step to follow was to identify how consumers are grouped (hierarchical cluster analysis), what the differences are (single-factor ANOVA), the behaviours (descriptive statistics), as well as the relationship among them (Pearson correlation statistics). Results show that there are two consumer profiles with different levels of awareness of sustainable consumption behaviour. The principal outcome of the study was that Colombian consumers have embraced the behaviour of quality of life and resources for future generations; however, those consumers related to environmental care have been less involved, especially due to the influence of economic variables as such the cost of products and speculation in the prices of environmentally friendly products.