Ethical consumer practices of senior high school students of selected public and private schools in District 1 Tondo Manila

This study was conducted to assess the ethical consumer practices of selected public and private senior high school of district 1 Tondo, Manila in terms of ecological consciousness and social consciousness. After assessing this, a proposed strategic learning plan for applied economics subject was formulated. This study used purposive sampling in the selection of schools participants, while convenience sampling for students as respondents in gathering data and information needed for the study and collecting data among the selected senior high schools in district 1 Tondo, Manila. In the construction of the questionnaire, the researcher adopts and translate a validated research instrument with the permission of the original owner. The researcher sought the assistance among experts and master teachers coming from different schools to check tagalog translation and validation of the research instrument. Letter of request sent to the division’s office and principal of the school for the administration of the survey. The researcher personally administered the questionnaire to avoid problems that may occur. This study found out that students seldom practiced ethical consumer practices in public senior high school while students from private senior high school sometimes practice ethical consumer practices in terms of ecological consciousness and social consciousness. It is evidently implied with their answers in the survey. Through T-test of independent means, it was revealed that there is a significant difference on the assessment between the public and private senior high school students in ethical consumer practices because the assessment showed the extensiveness of the difference in terms of ecological consciousness and social consciousness of both public and private schools students. Furthermore, they need to strengthen their practices. A proposed strategic learning plan for applied economics subject specifically in consumption topic was formulated based from the findings of the study.

“As a vegetarian, we never do well enough”

Food is an area that receives little attention from psychologists, despite the fact that it provides many interesting situations and dilemmas through which human activity and development can be examined. Currently – at least in the WEIRD (western, educated, industrial, rich and democratic) countries (Henrich et al., 2010), – these activities are an important object of normative discourses and injunctions about how we should behave as consumers and how we should eat, notably when it comes to products of animal origin and meat in particular. In these countries, a large majority of people regularly consumes meat. Vegetarianism can be seen as a deviant behavior to this norm (Boyle, 2011), that provokes reactions as it questions the taken-for-granted normality and necessity of meat consumption (Larue, 2015). However, the issue of meat consumption also intersects with many other normative discourses, such as the imperatives to be an ethical consumer or to be a hedonist. In this paper, I examine how people orient themselves in relation to these norms and possibly take distance from some of them. More specifically I propose to do so through the notion of positioning. Position and positioning are notions that are increasingly used and discussed in psychology. The theorization of these notions is recent, and thus quite disparate (Gülerce et al., 2014), although a few scholars worked on possible synthesis of different traditions (Gillespie & Martin, 2014; Raggatt, 2015). I argue that examining positioning processes in relation to normative discourses and behaviors constitutes a way to understand the relation between the person and some social norms, and that this use will also contribute to deepen the conceptualization of positioning. I draw on empirical work conducted with people who recently changed their habits of consumption of food of animal origin. The questions I examine are: how do people position themselves in the normative and contested world of consumption of food of animal origin, and what are the processes possibly allowing them to question and transgress the norms in this area.

Social desirability bias as an influencing factor of ethical consumer behavior

Consumers usually consider themselves as more ethical than their peers, manifesting a need to appear more socially orientated than they actually are. The main objective of this study was to analyze the influence of social desirability bias on ethical consumer behavior considered at a component level. Data were collected from a sample of 332 Romanian individuals from the 18-26 age group. The data analysis process involved co-variance structural equation modeling performed with the help of AMOS. Results show that both the positive and negative sides of social desirability significantly influence the three dimension of ethical consumer behavior. Therefore, based on results from this study, researchers can better understand the complex structure of ethical consumer behavior form a different point of view.

Is Sustainable Consumption Translated into Ethical Consumer Behavior?

Nowadays, sustainability is assumed to have high potential for promoting ethical consumer behavior. The aim of this study was to analyze the influence of sustainable behavior on consumer intention to be ethical when it comes to political, social, and environmental dimensions. Therefore, insightful results can be brought forward to explain consumer ethical behavior from a different perspective. Covariance structural equation modelling in AMOS was used for data analysis. Three antecedents, namely environmental, social, and economic dimensions of sustainable consumption, are found to have a significant and positive impact on intention to engage in ethically consumer behavior. In this context, companies seeking to proactively approach eco-friendly consumers will need to understand the complexity of the decision-making process of ethically minded consumers.

Ethical Consumer Behavior: Does Second-Hand Consumption Influence Satisfaction with Life?

What do we really need to live a happy life? Second-hand consumption has been proposed to be a lifestyle choice which is done voluntarily (Steffen, 2017, p. 204) and could increase peoples’ life satisfaction. Besides economic motives, many people consume second-hand for ethical reasons, e.g., to distance themselves from the consumption system, for ecological reasons, social reasons or have hedonic motivations (Guiot & Roux, 2010). Some consumers simply want to shop clever (Gregson & Crewe, 2003, p. 11), started to reduce their consumption or re-use to reduce their ecological footprint (Waight, 2013). This study assesses the relationship between second-hand consumption motivation and satisfaction with life in a structural equation model. 203 Germans participated in the online study and evaluated their motivation for second-hand consumption based on the scale of Guiot and Roux (2010). Satisfaction with life was measured with Diener, Emmons and Griffin’s (1985) Satisfaction of life scale which has been translated into German by Janke and Glöckner-Rist (2014). The findings indicate that consumers primarily buy second-hand to hunt for treasures, to find original products, to engage socially and for ethical reasons. Economic motives were also dominant. The study shows that second-hand consumption motivation does not influence satisfaction with life.

Influence of Variables to Reduce the Intention and Behaviour Purchase Gaps in Eco-Label Food Products

Academic researchers have sought to examine the variables that affect purchasing behaviour and the development of models for ethical consumer behaviour due to the fact that consumers are increasingly aware of the impact that daily food products can have on the environment. As a result, the demand for environmentally friendly food has increased rapidly and the companies have created different eco-labels to encourage consumers to buy their products. However, there is still a large gap between the intent to purchase eco-labeled products and the actual purchasing behaviour. Thus, this paper explains and assesses the extrinsic and intrinsic variables that could reduce the gap between eco-label purchase intention and the actual purchase behaviour for eco-labelled food products based on the TRA theory. The qualitative findings show that product benefits consumer environmental knowledge, consumer environmental awareness and demographic aspects, all which influence or affect the purchase intention for ecolabelled food, while the eco-label type I has no relationship with the intention of purchase for food with eco-label attributes. This paper is very useful for Latin American food companies given that most of the current research has been focused on European countries.