Proposing a sustainable consumption scale

Abstract

The article reports the construction and empirical assessment of a sustainable consumption scale, based on a survey carried out in 2009 with 512 undergraduate students from a major Brazilian federal university. Starting with the review of scales concerning environmentally friendly consumption, found in marketing and consumption behavior literature, a construct of sustainable consumption was worked out, which guided the proposition of a scale to render it operational. The methodological procedures adopted in the development of the scale followed the recommendations of experts such as Netemeyer, Bearden and Sharma (2003), Hair et al. (2005) and Harrington (2009). In the analysis of the empirical data, the sample was randomly split in two subsamples, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted. Sustainable consumption, conceptually defined as environmental awareness in the purchase of goods and services, the avoidance of wasted resources, the effort to recycle materials and products, and the propensity toward a more frugal lifestyle can be rendered operational using a 13-item scale with four dimensions: environmental awareness, economy of resources, recycling and frugality. Replications of the final scale are suggested, to improve its psychometrics properties. Despite its limitations, it is believed that the proposed instrument is useful for researching the relation between sustainable consumption and other complex constructs.