CONSUMER JUDGMENT AND DECISION MAKING IN THE SUSTAINABILITY-RELATED DOMAIN: DRIVERS FOSTERING EFFICIENT CHANGE

Prof. Dr. Justina Baršytė (ISM University of Management and Economics, Social Sciences, Management – S 003). supervised the dissertation from 2019 to 2024.

The doctoral dissertation will be defended at the Scientific Council of Management at ISM University of Management and Economics on February 20, 2025, at 11 A.M in ISM room 209.

Summary:

This dissertation aims to address the questions related to drivers fostering efficient change in the sustainable consumption domain. To achieve this, it (1) analyzes sustainable and circular consumption simultaneously, then (2) delves deeper into consumer judgment and decision-making regarding sustainable products, and, lastly, (3) does the same for circular products. First, this dissertation provides a refined conceptualization of sustainable and circular consumption by exploring their overlapping and distinct aspects. This work also shows that sustainable and circular consumption may be influenced by different traits such as meaning in life, openness to experience, and dispositional greed in diverging ways. Second, the current work expands knowledge about the negative emotion of sadness and shows its motivational role towards responsible behavior, i.e., sustainable consumption. This work shows that such frequently felt emotion, in some cases, can actively direct people to positive behavior. The results of experiments conducted show that the negative emotion of sadness performs a mediating role in a relationship between experiencing meaning threats and sustainable consumption. Finally, this dissertation investigates the spill-over effect of the presence of origin cues. This work shows that such origin cues increase the perceived monetary value and desirability of circular goods. Moreover, origin cues increase the closeness to the sense of self, and, in turn, this closeness leads to greater desirability of circular good. The present work also investigated the boundary conditions of this relationship and demonstrated the moderating role of acquisition centrality.

Defence council:

Annotation.