ROLE OF FAMILY AND NEW ENVIRONMENTAL PARADIGM ON ECOLOGICALLY CONSCIOUS CONSUMPTION ATTITUDES.

• Author: Mukherji, Jyotsna

INTRODUCTION

The world is witnessing unprecedented social and cultural changes. One important dimension of these global changes is the dramatic increase in the consumption of goods, which, besides stimulating economic activity, also threatens the stability and diversity of the natural environment in many ways. The threats range from the direct consumption of particular plants, animals, and non-renewable natural resources that damage or eliminate stocks, to the indirect impact which must be traced through numerous economic, social, and physical channels. There is considerable concern over "global warming" and the role humans play in adversely affecting the environment through excessive consumption, waste, and emission. There is a general concern that the environmental pressures of an increasingly populated and affluent world are starting to threaten the ecological processes that sustain human life.

The Brundtland Commission (Our Common Future, 1987) defines sustainability as meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. The premise of the UN World Summit on sustainable development in Johannesburg in 2002 was that fundamental changes in the way societies produce and consume are imperative in order to achieve sustainable development, and to achieve this goal requires effort from governments, producers, and consumers. Since the focus of our study is the consumer, we address sustainability from a consumer's perspective namely: buying reusable water bottles. We choose to make consumption of plastic in the form of disposable plastic water bottles as our focus because use and disposal of plastics have emerged as a serious issue for environmental and human health. We live in what is called the "Plastic Age" with plastic products becoming the common and lauded for their durability and convenience. However, once disposed they are filling up landfills, litter public spaces and over 250,000 tons are estimated to float in the oceans (Ericksen et al., 2014), adversely affecting marine life and through consumption of fish human life too. Furthermore, most commonly used plastics produce greenhouse gasses when exposed to sunlight and thus impact anthropogenic climate change (Royer et al., 2018). Finally, is the risk to human health associated with certain plastics and exposure to harmful chemicals. For all the above reasons efforts to encourage caution and limit use of plastics especially single use products like disposable water bottles is of paramount importance. In this spirit, this paper attempts to understand what influences rejection of single use bottles in favor of reusable ones. The insight gained from this study will add to the body of knowledge pertaining to the perceptions, beliefs and attitudes related to plastic use. Such knowledge will help social marketers and public policy persons' craft strategies to address this existential problem.

The consumers in our study are business students. As educators we were interested in understanding not only our students' beliefs and attitudes toward sustainable consumption, but also to examine the role of business education in socializing and creating awareness toward sustainability issues. Specifically, we were interested in examining if we as professors discuss the environmental impact of consumption and the importance of the ethical criteria in decision-making, especially the concept of the triple bottom line: economic, social, and environmental. It is fair to say that most corporate business practices in the western world have been built on the idea that business responsibility is directed towards shareholders, and more recently perhaps towards customers and employees. For sustainable development to be achieved, it is suggested that business practice should also reflect responsibility to other stakeholders namely society and the environment (Donaldson & Preston, 1995; Michaelis, 2003). We adopted the socialization perspective, and also considered the impact of other socializing agents such as the influence of family and religion on sustainable consumption. We decided to consider some individual difference variables as they relate to a person's spirituality and environmental values. For this research we examined sustainable consumption beliefs of business students as they related to use of reusable water bottles as opposed to single use disposable plastic water bottles.

Business School Education

The environmental sociology literature (Van Liere & Dunlap, 1980) suggests that people with higher levels of education are more likely to hold pro-environmental attitudes and to have a greater sense of efficacy that facilitates their participation in movements. Thus, education is modeled as having a direct effect on beliefs, attitudes, awareness, and levels of activism in areas such as sustainable consumption.

Business schools have also incorporated the teaching of environmental issues in their curricula. It is reported that 54% of business schools require a course in environmental sustainability or corporate social responsibility, up from 34% in 2001, according to a biennial survey of 91 US business schools by the World Resources Institute and the Aspen Institute, published in October 2005. While there has been significant growth among business schools with regard to teaching of...