Consumers, sustainability, and recession
Andrew Curry Henley Centre HeadlightVision
The received wisdom is that in the face of an economic downturn, consumers become less interested in environmental sustainability. There is a second assumption embedded in this: that if consumers are less interested in sustainability, then the outcomes of their behaviour are also less sustainable. In practice, the evidence which would enable us to test these two hypotheses is poor. This article seeks to review the relevant evidence, and identify some possible hypotheses.
It is worth beginning by...