News

In unserer zweiten Veröffentlichung beschäftigt sich der Psychologe Robin Jadkowski mit psychologischen Determinanten, die zu umweltfreundlicheren Kaufentscheidungen führen. Dabei wird zum einen eine Methode erarbeitet, die Daten aus dem User Tracking unseres GCA mit Umfragedaten abgleicht und zum anderen die Beziehung unterschiedlicher Variablen zueinander untersucht, welche als Triebkraft für umweltfreundliches Verhalten dienen könnten.

Abstract

This study evaluates psychological and socio-demographic driving forces of pro-environmental behavior (PEB) in an online shopping environment. Previous empirical studies substantiate the role and strengths of numerous psychological driving forces that influence individual PEB. However, the type of PEB operationalization is heterogenous, as well as the type and operationalization of the driving forces. Steg & Vlek (2009) stress the point that effective interventions have to be aimed at these driving forces and that the strengths and relationship differs for specific types of PEB. Up to date, studies that use actual behavior as operationalizations of PEB in online shopping environments are rare, therefore this study pursued two main goals: (1) Test a method to link user tracking data of a digital shopping assistant (as indicators for pro-environmental shopping decisions) with self-reported survey items; (2) Exploratively assess the relationship of four socio-demographic and 14 psychological variables that may act as driving forces for PEB. The click behavior of N = 35 beta users of an online shopping assistant was tracked over a period of five months and successfully linked to previously obtained survey data. It was not possible to reliably detect effects of the assessed driving forces – PEB relationship with the achieved sample size. In conclusion, this studies procedure revealed great potential for future research to evaluate the effects of psychological variables on PEB in a real shopping environment.

Wir freuen uns, an dieser Stelle das erste Arbeitspapier des Projekts Green Consumption Assistant veröffentlichen zu können. Unsere Kollegin Cathérine Lehmann fasst in diesem unsere Entscheidungswege zu nachhaltigen Produktempfehlungen, sowie mögliche Ansätze zur Skalierung zusammen.

Abstract

Data availability on the sustainability of products is low which poses challenges for actors from all sectors dealing with promoting sustainable consumption. We describe how we currently provide users of a Chrome browser extension with general sustainability advice and with recommendations of best-in-class products in terms of sustainability. Then we outline a possible concept towards more automatisation and thus scalability of the current approach. For the latter, we discuss six different schemes for generating large-scale green recommendations on a product level, finding that currently product sustainability can be best evaluated in terms of data availability when resorting to lists of labelled products. In the future, Product Environmental Footprints and similar data should be more easily available in order to have quantifiable data for research and for showing more information to users. Overall, an integrated approach, including e.g. aspects of  organizational sustainability, might help to fill data voids and/or to provide a more complete picture of a product’s sustainability level.