Written by Marie Brand, PhD Candidate at WU Vienna
In recent years, consumer research has made significant strides in understanding and promoting sustainable behaviors, such as recycling, reducing plastic use, and choosing sustainable products.
However, recent insights from Christophe Lembregts, Associate Professor at Erasmus University Rotterdam, suggest that this rapidly evolving field may benefit from a broader focus, particularly in addressing the climate emergency.
In their IJRM article, "Consumer-driven climate mitigation: Exploring barriers and solutions in studying higher mitigation potential behaviors," Christophe and his co-author Romain Cadario argue that the phenomena that actually make a big positive impact on mitigating greenhouse gas emissions are understudied by consumer researchers. For example, the most studied behaviors like recycling and using recycled materials have a negligible impact compared to behaviors the field hasn’t studied at all like flying less or renewables-based heating.
“I saw it in my own life: I genuinely believed I was being highly environmentally friendly by engaging in numerous sustainable actions. But of course, what matters is that these actions actually have an impact. As researchers, we may be looking at behaviors that might not have the biggest mitigation potential such as recycling.”
– Christophe Lembregts
The figure illustrates an interesting trend: despite recycling's limited mitigation potential, it has dominated published studies in consumer research. Conversely, behaviors with greater mitigation potential, like switching to electric vehicles, received far less attention. The paper identifies 10 high-impact behaviors, such as living car-free or reducing flights, with no studies published on them in leading consumer research journals.
Furthermore, findings from research trying to increase lower mitigation potential behaviors like recycling may not translate into increasing higher mitigation potential behaviors like adopting a vegan lifestyle.
The article identifies several barriers to why researchers have not been studying high mitigation potential behaviors. One of those barriers was inspired by recent work by Stijn van Osselaer, John Lynch, and others. Currently, it seems that one approach to theory building dominates consumer research: so-called construct-to-construct mapping. This approach focuses on identifying novel relationships between known theoretical constructs. As a result, many sustainability studies treat "green consumption" as a broad construct without specific operational details, implicitly assuming that higher-potential behaviors are theoretically similar to lower-potential ones.
“If we can generalize from recycling to plant-based eating, that would be great. But I think we should investigate whether that's actually true."
– Christophe Lembregts
The paper emphasizes that when studying sustainable consumer behavior, we should proactively consider mitigation potential, for example by prioritizing high mitigation potential behaviors. Alternatively, for those researchers who want to focus on easy-to-implement, lower mitigation potential behaviors, it might be worthwhile to estimate the aggregate mitigation potential of a suggested intervention by multiplying the per-capita estimates by the proportion of consumers that changed their behavior. For example, an intervention that convinces 20 out of 100 consumers to continuously drive more fuel-efficiently might be more effective in terms of aggregate mitigation potential than an intervention that convinces 2 out of 100 consumers to adopt a completely vegan lifestyle.
“When designing studies and thinking about behaviors in the paradigm, we usually don’t consider mitigation potential. But it’s something that I will do from now on and I hope other researchers will do too. When considering mitigation potential, you have a lot of possibilities and that’s what I really like about this paper.”
– Christophe Lembregts
Risky business
This is not your run-of-the-mill sustainable consumer behavior paper with a main effect, followed by mediation and moderation. Talking about how the paper came about, Christophe has this to say:
“Like most of the things that I do, and I think that is true for many scientists as well, it happened almost by accident. I was writing a grant proposal on magnitude insensitivity and my gut feeling was that we might not be looking at behaviors with the biggest climate impact. I typically let other people read what I write and then one of the professors in our department told me: “Why don’t you actually test that and go beyond your gut feeling?” So that’s what I did, even if it was unconventional stuff and a little bit risky.”
– Christophe Lembregts
During the review process, Christophe explained that the paper went through some major changes. First, Christophe asked Romain to join the project because he had much more experience with review papers. They revised the mitigation potential behaviors to be more up-to-date and re-did the whole review. They also refocused the paper to target researchers explicitly, a shift from the original draft, which tried to speak to both the consumer and researcher perspectives.
“In hindsight, the first submitted version was a bad version of the current paper even though it seemed the best possible version at the time. But as the paper changes it also becomes part of the journal itself and we were lucky with a knowledgeable and constructive review team.”
– Christophe Lembregts
Alone you struggle, together you succeed
Talking about the research process behind his projects, Christophe opens up about the less glamorous side of academic research. The final papers published in the top journals often include a challenging process.
“Like with many of my projects, for most of the process, I feel actually very stupid. It's a struggle and there are moments when you really get stuck. Sometimes even with three or four studies, you may still lack a clear understanding of exactly what you're aiming to achieve. It is sometimes frustrating, but also super fun.”
– Christophe Lembregts
What makes a paper go from a struggle to a rewarding experience for Christophe are the colleagues he works with.
“It's a collaborative effort and I think it’s very important to acknowledge that. Having people around or reaching out to people who know more than you, that's one of the most important things. And that's very rewarding, that keeps me going.”
– Christophe Lembregts
When looking for important traits in a co-author, Christophe says it’s all about working with smart people who are on the same wavelength.
“I think I like to work with people who have a lot of energy. With two young children, I occasionally find myself running low on energy. But you spent so much time with getting the paper out, if you do that with somebody you're not personally aligned with that would be very difficult for me.”
– Christophe Lembregts
“I have a lot of friends who aren’t deeply involved in consumer research, and they often wonder what I actually do all day. I find it refreshing to have these outside perspectives; it keeps me grounded and reminds me of the broader context of my work.”
– Christophe Lembregts
Read the paper
Interested in reading all the details about high mitigation potential behaviors? Read the full paper here.
Want to cite the paper?
Lembregts, C., & Cadario, R. (2024). Consumer-driven climate mitigation: Exploring barriers and solutions in studying higher mitigation potential behaviors, International Journal of Research in Marketing, 41(3), 513-523.
Meet Christophe Lembregts
What do you like to do in your free time?
I like to just spend time with the kids, we don't do spectacular stuff. For example, we bike to the grocery store, which is like a whole event for my daughters. They are over the moon when they can scan all the products. I also like to run and play football.
Any other hobbies?
Like many Flemish people, I watch cycling, I'm totally crazy about it. It’s how I've been raised. When we went to my grandparents' house, it was always on the television. I see why others might think it’s boring, but the landscapes, the tactics, the persistence, I love it.
What would you have been if you weren’t in academia?
I actually studied social science and communication science. And I think I wanted to be a journalist at some point. In hindsight, I think I wouldn't be made for being a journalist. I probably would have had trouble with the extremely tight deadlines.
Any advice on social choices?
Befriend people outside your discipline. I have many friends who aren’t deeply involved in consumer research, and they often wonder what I actually do all day. I find it refreshing to have these outside perspectives; it keeps me grounded and reminds me of the broader context of my work.
This article was written by
Marie Brand
Ph.D. candidate at the WU, Vienna
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