Sustainable Consumption Behavior Among University Students in Indonesia: The Role of Values and Norms

Abstract

It is believed that consumers play a major role in environmental preservation. Therefore, it is fundamental to explore what factors can encourage consumers to engage in environmental preservation, or, in other words, to encourage consumers to conduct sustainable consumption behavior. One of the factors believed to be able to affect consumers’ sustainable consumption behavior is psychological factors. This study tries to explore psychological factors in the form of norms and personal values and their effect on two types of sustainable consumption behavior, namely buying and curtailment behavior in the context of university students in Indonesia. A study with 256 respondents has been conducted in an attempt to test the proposed model of this study. Based on the result, it is found that norms and values can explain both types of sustainable consumption behavior used in this study. Here, altruistic values and personal norms are proven to be significant in influencing both behaviors, whereas egoistic values are proven to be insignificant. However, there is a difference in the result of subjective norms, in which they are able to explain sustainable buying behavior, but fail in explaining sustainable curtailment behavior. This study provides understanding of sustainable consumption behavior in the context of university students from a psychological factors perspective. Additionally, implications and suggestions for future research are elaborated.