INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT RESEARCH AND REVIEW

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1 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT RESEARCH AND REVIEW THE VIABILITY OF SUSTAINABLE LIFESTYLE WITHIN INDIAN CONTEXT Bhavna R Shetty* 1, Dr. Rajashree Gujarathi 2 1 Asst. Prof, Shri. S P Kothari & Smt. G S Kothari Institute of Computer Science & Technology Management, Nashik Road (Maharashtra), India. 2 Prof, Sinhgad Institute of Business Management, Chandivali, Mumbai (Maharashtra), India. ABSTRACT Under the pressure of rapid economic growth, industrialization, growing population, poverty, demographic and societal changes, making sustainable choices to reduce negative impact on the environment will be a big challenge for Indians. A huge promising contribution in this direction can come from the young generation; for it is the youth with their dreams, passion and hopes; who hold the future of any country. This study thus aimed at studying the perceptions of youth in Mumbai regarding sustainable living and the adoption of sustainable practices by them in their daily lives. The research question sought by this study was to know what factors influence the potential and competency of youth to live sustainably within Indian context. The objective was to identify sustainable lifestyle, green purchase and energy conservation practices followed by the youth and further understand constraints and motivators affecting commitment towards sustainable lifestyle. A self completion questionnaire was designed to achieve objectives and test hypotheses of the study. From the youths responses it was clear that they had high degree of environmental concern and accepted that it was everyone s responsibility to protect and preserve our environment. However almost all respondents agreed that government should first provide with employment opportunities and better quality of life to citizens before focusing on preserving the environment. Youths scored higher on energy conservation as against green purchase behaviour. Lack of faith in green products as being eco friendly, accessible availability of green products and the cost of these products contributed as major constraints to green purchasing. Youths commitment towards sustainable practices was majorly dependent on support from friends and social group. An optimistic finding was that, youth understood the fact that anything labeled green need not necessarily be environment friendly. The study holds implications for green product manufacturers and government to take required efforts and build on youths insight for a sustainable tomorrow. Keywords: Energy Conservation, Green Purchase Behaviour, Mumbai, Sustainable Lifestyle, Youth. 1. INTRODUCTION Sustainability is the capacity to endure. For humans, sustainability is the long-term maintenance of well being, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions. The Concise Oxford English dictionary defines the term, sustainability as the ability to keep *Corresponding Author

2 (something) going over time or continuously. In context of lifestyle, sustainable lifestyle means being aware of the consequences of the choices made and therefore make choices that do the least harm. It involves more than just care for the environment, it also involves thinking about people and community, about health and wellbeing (United Kingdom, GSSL 2010). Lifestyles define and differentiate us and in particular for youth the way they live becomes a part of their identity. In recent years, the term sustainability has become synonymous with green living. However beyond going green, sustainable living is a deliberate lifestyle characterized by resourcefulness, self-reliance and healthy life. Living sustainably means looking at what we are overusing and reducing that to the necessary consumption to reduce waste and exploitation in everyday life. It s about conserving and lowering consumption of resources. As per Global Survey on Sustainable Lifestyles by Taskforce (2010), sustainable lifestyles means rethinking our ways of living, how we buy and how we organize our everyday life. Sustainable living can be defined as being aware of the consequences of the choices made and therefore make choices that do the least harm to the environment. Thus an approach towards green consumption and energy conservation practices can lead to the promotion of sustainable lifestyle. Everyday decisions about whether or not to purchase a product or service have the potential to contribute to a more or less sustainable pattern of consumption. Sustainable living is about balancing our consumption between 'wants' and 'needs'. While our lifestyles and consumption choices fulfill our needs and aspirations; they also have important impacts on our societies and environment. Consumption of resources, products and services is necessary and at times desirable; but to consume without boundaries and limitations is what creates environmental and social challenges. Bringing sustainability to our lifestyles can minimize the use of earth s natural resources, reduce energy use and levels of pollution and waste, while still meeting basic needs and providing a better quality of life for ourselves and our future generations. Green consumption begins with purchasing products which are essential and environmentally friendly. Environmentally friendly products are not harmful to human health and can save expenses on power, fuel, and disposal. Consumers can and actually need to preserve environment and boost economy by green consumption. According to Mostafa (2007), green consumption behavior or environmental friendly buying behavior is the consumption of products that are benevolent or beneficial to the environment, recyclable or conservable and sensitive or responsive to ecological concerns. Propagation and cultivation of green consumer behavior requires rethinking our way of living and consumption pattern. Environmental concern is a no longer a luxury afforded by only the wealthy [28] but has become the foremost need of time. The purpose of this paper was to understand the practicality of sustainable living, green purchasing and energy conservation within Indian context. Lifestyles are deep rooted in our cultural and social norms and thus for realism of sustainable living; its practices must be supported by these norms. In the urbanizing world of developing countries where the path towards progress has just started for some; are these countries ready to slowdown, contemplate over and take a turn towards sustainable development? Under the pressure of rapid economic growth, industrialization, growing population, poverty, demographic and societal changes, making sustainable choices to reduce negative impact on the environment Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 3615

3 will be a big challenge for Indians. A huge promising contribution in this direction can come from the young generation; for it is the youth with their dreams, passion and hopes; who hold the future of any country. Development of any nation cannot be accomplished without active participation of youth. The activities undertaken by youth unquestionably impact a nation s development. This study thus aimed at studying the perceptions of youth in Mumbai regarding sustainable living and the adoption of sustainable practices by them in their daily lives. Indian youth with their enthusiasm, innovativeness and ability to take risk to bring about change, can tremendously contribute towards realization of sustainable future for India. Life in the busy and fast city of hope, Mumbai is an everyday challenge to be faced by most. With people barely having time to meet their ends, good quality of life is always questioned. In the midst of hectic and daunting lifestyle, what is the viability of sustainable lifestyle? Do individuals, in particular youth have the time to contemplate over their daily actions, to think beyond self, to care for their community and environment? The key research question What factors influence the potential and competency of youth to live sustainably within Indian context? 2. REVIEW OF LITERATURE Sustainable Lifestyles demand changes in individual attitudes and behavior. Understanding how and why decisions are made and also the willingness and potential to change the way we live are critical to achieve sustained behavioural change (Bedford et al., 2004; Jackson, 2005; OECD, 2002; Sanne, 2002). Changing consumption behavior is a psychologically, socially and culturally complex problem, requiring drastic changes in how people think about and use energy. Many environmental problems have the structure of a social dilemma, namely a conflict between private interests and the interests of the collective at large [5]. Normally, in many of these dilemmas people do things as they always have done without deliberating all possible outcomes or negative long term consequences. To change such habits people have to reflect upon their present behaviour and overcome certain obstacles during the process of behavioural change[4]. As Pettit et al. (1992) explain, green consumerism is extremely complex decision-making due to the range of behavioural phenomena [23]. Everyday decisions on practical environmental or ethical solutions often result in trade-offs between conflicting issues and result in a motivational and practical complexity of green consumption [15]. Sustainable Lifestyles is based on working from values, wasting less and living more and recognizing sustainability includes well-being of ourselves, society and the environment. According to Urlaub J (2009), the personal side of a sustainable lifestyle includes commitment to our own happiness, connect daily with what inspires us, participate in community, getting friends, family and coworkers involved in bringing eco awareness to their lives. Individual consumer s eco awareness and actions are not always related. Much research concurs that there is a significant gap between consumers claimed attitudes to green consumption and their actual behavior. Green intentions were not being converted into actions. As noted by Haron et al. (2005), even though, there was a positive correlation of environmental knowledge with environmental attitude and behavior, the magnitude of the Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 3616

4 correlation was low. In an exploratory research, Mullane (2010) notes that to have sustainable lifestyles, individuals need to have support from physical and social infrastructures, as well as institutions, however the decisions about a sustainable lifestyle are being made at individual and social levels. Hence individuals need to be motivated to adapt environment friendly practices. Verplanken and Roy of Sustainable Lifestyle Research Group noticed that many day to day activities occur automatically and are habitual in nature [31]; hence whilst individuals may have good intentions to lead more sustainable lifestyles, these good intentions often fall apart. Earlier studies have concluded that even though consumers were aware about the environmental issues they had to struggle to translate these concerns into purchase actions [6,31]. Consumers report that they are very concerned about environmental issues but are struggling to translate this into purchases. Thus, apart from attitude and behavior relationship, sustainable lifestyle research further shifted its focus on array of barriers to action that existed within individual and institutional context. Tanner (1999) classified environmental behavior constraints as subjective factors that were assumed to affect the preference for behavioral and objective conditions that inhibited the performance of environmental action. It was found that subjective factors played a decisive role. Other barriers to green behaviour include life brand strength, culture, demographic characteristics, finance, habit, lack of information, lifestyles, personalities, or trading off between different ethical factors [3,25], deficiency of facilities, time needed to take new actions, feeling of powerlessness and lack of agency [19]. Another exploratory study on consumers perception on green products found that lack of understanding about green products and environmental sustainability, ignorance and low customer delivered value of green products were major reasons that made green products unfavourable despite being environment friendly[13]. Also earlier studies have cited availability of time as major constraint to sustainable actions. A publication Living Sustainably: Its your choice by Oregon State University, (2008) noted that consequences of time poverty are most serious. When individuals feel the time crunch, they tend to compensate it in other ways. To make up for the lack of time purchase decisions are taken in a hurry or altogether unnecessary items are purchased. Evidence of this can be found in Young, Hwang, McDonald and Oates research that concluded that lack of time for research on eco friendly products, decision making and purchase was the first of five main barriers for respondents to purchase greener products. Also Tanner and Kast findings revealed that perceived time barriers reduced purchases of green food products mainly when they shopped in supermarkets [27]. A study to identify important factors affecting Hong Kong young consumers' green purchasing behavior identified social influence as the top predictor of adolescents' green purchasing behaviour, followed by environmental concern, concern for self-image in environmental protection and perceived environmental responsibility as major predictors [12]. This study aims at identifying barriers to green behavior of youths in the Indian city of Mumbai as, to the best of researchers knowledge very few studies exists in this regard. 3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Objectives of the Study The research study was undertaken with following objectives Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 3617

5 1. To study the perceptions of the youth regarding sustainable lifestyle in Mumbai. 2. To measure the level of awareness about need for eco friendly behaviour. 3. To identify sustainable lifestyle, green purchase and energy conservation practices followed by the youth. 4. To understand constraints and motivators affecting decisions and commitment of youth with regards sustainable lifestyle. 3.2 Statement of Hypotheses H1: Youth s choice for sustainable living will be positively correlated with their level of ecoawareness. H2: Youth s commitment to sustainable living will be positively correlated to availability of time. H3: Youth s commitment to sustainable living will be positively correlated to support from family. H4: Youth s commitment to sustainable living will be positively correlated to support from friends. 3.3 Method of Data Collection For this descriptive study a self-completion questionnaire was designed and pilot tested to check reliability of various scales used. All the scales showed high reliability and were hence considered as good measures to be used in the main study. A total of 300 questionnaires were distributed. 3.4 Participants The United Nations define youth as persons between the ages of 15 and 24. Thus for the purpose of this study; youths belonging to the age group of 18 to 25 years, who were either pursuing their post graduation studies or working, were included in the sample. This paper makes the basic assumption that if young generation is aware of environmental problems and is eco conscious then an environment friendly world could be hoped for. 3.5 Research Instrument The questionnaire was designed into following sections to measure various aspects about the participants related to the study. a) Participants level of awareness regarding environmental problems and the need for living sustainably. This was measured using Tantawi (2009) attitude scale which was modified for Indian use. The scale had twenty six items on five point Likerts. High score on the scale indicated high level of awareness and acceptance of the fact that there is need for individuals to live sustainably. b) Participants Sustainable practices measured along two dimensions- Green Purchasing and Energy Conservation. Green Purchasing is purchasing products which are essential and environmentally-friendly. This scale measured the extent to which individual respondents purchased or consumed products believed to have a more positive impact on the environment. The scale had nine items with five point Likert format ranging from 1= Never and 5= Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 3618

6 Everytime. High scores indicated satisfactory green purchase behavior. Energy conservation measured participant s intentions and attempts of reducing usage of energy or using less of an energy service to conserve various forms of energy. In all there were six items using five point Likert format ranging from 1= Never and 5= Everytime. High scores indicated maximum attempts of conserving energy. c) Participants commitment towards sustainable living measured on six items using five point Likert scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree. It needs to be realized that one time green purchasing or just few attempts to save energy does not contribute to sustainable living. What is required is a continuous and committed endeavor on behalf of individuals. d) Factors acting as barriers and motivators for sustainable living. This scale identified the constraints and motivators for sustainable living using ten items on Likert five point scale ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree. e) demographic information of participants like gender, age, qualification, income group and so. 3.6 Limitations There are a few limitations related to this study. Firstly, the data obtained through questionnaires were all self-reports from the participants. Therefore, the responses gained may have been subject to common method variance and response consistency effect. Secondly the respondents are only limited to one city. Therefore, it may not be appropriate to generalize findings to all in India. Future studies should cover other cities and states in India for generalization purpose. Also if sample size is increased it would produce more productive results. 4. ANALYSIS This section reports on detailed analysis of data collected from completed questionnaires received, with sixty three percent response rate; of which 52% were female and 48% male. 58% of the respondents were working, 36% were doing their masters course; while 6% were pursuing post graduation along with doing a part time job. All respondents belonged to middle income group or class. Encouragingly a very high 86% of respondents showed alertness and awareness towards being environment friendly. They exhibited high concern for the potential damage being done to environment and its impact on human beings. Pollution, depletion of natural resources and increasing health problems were their major concern. 87% accepted that it was everyone s responsibility to protect and preserve our environment and that the government, family and educational institutions need to raise eco awareness among the younger generation. However almost all respondents (96%) agreed that government should first provide with employment opportunities and better quality of life to citizens before focusing on preserving the environment. Respondents were not only aware and had knowledge about environmental problems and its causes, but also considered themselves as knowing the solutions to many of these problems. Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 3619

7 Respondents (76%) agreed to the present day need and importance of consuming green products, but unfortunately only 47% of them actually scored high on green purchasing behaviour. This is in confirmation with earlier studies which conclude that simply availability of information and having knowledge does not necessarily transform into green actions. The only green purchase behaviors effortlessly demonstrated were reduced buying of plastic or polythene products (62%) and purchase of power saving light bulbs (58%); but scored least on eating organic or vegetarian food. However respondents scored higher on energy conservation as against green purchase; with 67% having strongly agreed to conserve water, electricity and fuel. 91% said that they used public transport like buses and local trains; rather these being the most affordable and convenient source of transport for the citizens of Mumbai. Nevertheless 73% expressed desire of owing a car as a part good lifestyle. Personal economic concern was given priority by 62% when it came to staying committed to sustainable practices. Despite acknowledging most environmental concerns and issues, respondents could not refrain themselves from using mobiles, tablets and laptops. Purchase of these products was much related to the status quo rather than eco consciousness. Lack of faith in green products as being eco friendly, accessible availability of green products and the cost of these products contributed as major constraints to green purchasing. Respondents expressed that routine buying decisions were being made in a hurry due to lack of time to contemplate over product labels and information (refer figure 1). Respondents felt that product information needs to convince why and how product is green in much simpler and visible manner. 4.1 Hypotheses testing Fig 1: Constraints to Green Purchase Behaviour Source: Data analysis of the study To test all the hypotheses Pearson s product-moment correlation coefficient was calculated, as this coefficient r summarizes the direction and degree (closeness) of linear relations between two variables. Hypothesis H1, though positive, did not show very strong relation between being informed and living sustainably. Hypotheses H2 and H4 stand true, indicating positive relation of youth s commitment to sustainable living with two factors, availability of Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 3620

8 time and support from friends. The coefficient of determination R 2 showed 63% contribution of support from friends towards youth s commitment to sustainable living; while family s support was not significant enough (H3). 5. CONCLUSION From the youths responses it was clear that they had high degree of environmental concern due to which they held a positive perception about sustainable living. Sustainable lifestyle demands for being kind to environment, cooperating with others and community to bring about collective change, thinking from values, wasting less and living more and taking responsibility for our own wellbeing. Committing to these practices in busy hectic daily schedule proves challenging enough. An optimistic finding was that the youth understood the fact that anything labeled green need not necessarily be environment friendly. Practices of energy conservation were found to be more practical and feasible to be inculcated into daily lifestyle of youth, rather than green purchase behavior. Particularly because of lack of faith in green products actually serving the purpose and cost of these products, youths scored low on green purchase behavior. Simply advertising products as being green does not suffice the purpose; to be further convinced, youths need information on how and why products are eco friendly. It was very apparent that their commitment towards sustainable practices was majorly dependent on support from friends and their social group. The study holds implications for green product manufacturers and government to take required efforts and build on youths insight for a sustainable tomorrow. Adopting sustainable lifestyle would become imperative for all over the coming years and youths have a major role to play in this transformation. REFERENCES [1] Bamberg S. How Does Environmental Concern Influence Specific Environmentally Related Behaviours?: A New Answer to an Old Question. Journal of Environmental Psychology 2003; 23: [2] Bedford T, Jones P, Walker H. Every little bit helps overcoming the challenges to researching and promoting and implementing sustainable lifestyles, Centre of Sustainable Development, University of Westminster, London [3] Biel A, Dahlstrand U, Grankvist G. Habitual and value-guided purchase behavior. Ambio 2005; 34(4-5): [4] Dahlstrand U, Biel A. Pro-Environmental Habits: Propensity Levels in Behavioral Change. Journal of Applied Social Psychology1997; 27: doi: /j tb00650.x [5] Dawes RM. Social dilemmas. Annual Review of Psychology 1980; 31: [6] Defra. Sustainable Consumption and Production: Encouraging Sustainable Consumption, Retrieved from [7] DeYoung R. Changing behavior and making it stick. Environment and Behavior 1993; 25: Copyright 2012 Published by IJMRR. All rights reserved 3621

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