Green Consumer Behavior– Part I: Information Paradox | Futurelab – An international marketing strategy consultancy

Green Consumer Behavior Part I: Information paradox

by: David Wigder

Understanding consumer behavior is critical for any marketer, and is especially important in regard to environmental products and services.

More than one hundred years of consumption theory – across a wide range of academic disciplines including economics, psychology and sociology - makes it clear that there are many different motivations and influences that drive consumer behavior. Professor Tim Jackson at the Centre for Environmental Strategy at the University of Surrey (Guildford, UK) provides a comprehensive summary of this history in his Motivating Sustainable Consumption, a report to the Sustainable Development Research Network, a Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs (UK)-funded initiative designed to link research and policymaking in the area of sustainable development.

Green Consumer Behavior– Part I: Information Paradox | Futurelab – An international marketing strategy consultancy

Of importance in this repor is this comment quoted here:

"One counter-intuitive observation that Jackson made is that of the Information Paradox: People want to “feel in control of their lives and resist feelings of helplessness.” More information, however, may not empower them. In fact, it may have “precisely the opposite effect.” "