Consumer Mindfulness: How Present-Moment-Awareness Affects Sustainable Consumerism

摘要

The limits of the earth's natural carrying capacity require us to curb overconsumption, a main driver of climate change. In order for any meaningful decrease in consumption to occur consumers need to adopt different lifestyles and change their daily routines which determine resource consumption. However, the psychological foundations for such a transition remain underexplored. We argue that increased mindfulness, a mode of consciousness that is defined as a receptive attention to and awareness of present events and experience, may provide a mechanism to mitigate overcon-sumption. Mindfulness practice has been shown to counteract many problems associated with overconsumption, such as obesity, alcohol abuse, or compulsive buying. Considering the demonstrated positive effects of mindfulness on individual health and wellbeing, this study suggests that mindfulness also affects sustainability of consumption in that it may lead consumers to consume differently to reduce the environmental impacts of that which is consumed (green product consumption) and to reduce the quantities of goods and services consumed (reduced consumption). In particular, the current study is guided by the research question how mindfulness affects sustainable consumption patterns in terms of composition and volume and, furthermore, how environmental concern and Perceived Consumer Effectiveness (PCE) mediate this relationship.