How Do Consumers React to Production Waste?

Haiyue (Felix) Xu and Lisa E Bolton

Journal of Consumer Research, 2024, vol. 51, issue 2, 212-237

Abstract: Production waste, or inefficiencies in product manufacturing, is a major contributor to environmental problems. Consider production waste in garment manufacturing—which has been criticized for wasteful use of natural resources (e.g., using excessive water and fabric) and wasteful disposal of resource residuals (e.g., discarding excessive wastewater and fabric scraps). The present research examines consumer reactions to production waste and its mitigation as a function of whether it is characterized in terms of resource use versus disposal. A series of seven studies (including field and secondary data) finds that (i) consumers are less sensitive to wasteful resource use than disposal due to lower perceptions of environmental harm; (ii) likewise, consumers are less sensitive to waste mitigation targeting resource use than disposal due to lower perceptions of environmental benefit; and (iii) these waste reaction differences are attenuated when resource scarcity or long-term orientation is heightened (which increases consumer sensitivity to resource use). Together, this research sheds light on how, why, and when consumers are averse to production waste, while providing guidance regarding interventions focused on fighting production waste and promoting sustainability.

Keywords: waste aversion; production waste; resource use and disposal; waste mitigation; sustainability; interventions (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jcr/ucad060 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jconrs:v:51:y:2024:i:2:p:212-237.

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Consumer Research is currently edited by Bernd Schmitt, June Cotte, Markus Giesler, Andrew Stephen and Stacy Wood

More articles in Journal of Consumer Research from Journal of Consumer Research Inc.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().