Introduction

As consumption is “the sole end and purpose of all production” [1] (p. 625), its exponential growth has created ever-growing production systems that exploit and deplete natural resources, to the point where, today, humanity is facing an existential crisis related to global warming and climate change [2]. This exponential consumption rise must be decelerated and made sustainable before it breaks the biosphere’s natural balance [3] and damages the life system [4] (p. 20) but the typical approach of putting into place efficient production systems alone [5], without making consumption sustainable, will not avert this looming danger. The Oslo Symposium defined sustainable consumption as “the use of goods and services that respond to basic needs and bring a better quality of life, while minimizing the use of natural resources, toxic materials and emissions of waste and pollutants over the life cycle, so as not to jeopardize the needs of future generations” [6]. Being both analytical and transformational [7], sustainable consumption research aims to build positive environmental attitudes and values and to transform those attitudes and values into appropriate behaviors [8–12]. Although three decades of sustainable consumption research (SCR) has seen many innovative ideas presented by diverse disciplines, due to missing practical strategies, little has been achieved in terms of consumption sustainability [13]; on the contrary, the consumption has accelerated, as indicated by the Earth Overshoot Day [14], indicating worsening situations and necessitating new innovative methods [13,15].

Academics from varied disciplines, including environmental economics [16,17], social psychologists [18,19], sociologists [20,21], and marketing [22] have analyzed consumption practices and proposed transformational measures to make them more sustainable [23,24]. These contributions to SCR from various disciplines have developed it into a diverse and fragmented field [25] composed of many overlapping, interdependent concepts and solutions with varying strengths and weaknesses [26,27]. Thus, reviews of this diverse literature can play a key role by consolidating advances in SCR and contributions to theory, policy, and practice.

Liu et al. [25] conducted a bibliometric review of SCR, based on documents published between 1995 and 2014. Their review examined the scope and composition of the SCR knowledge base, its development, and evolutionary turns. The review analyzed 920 publications and found that SCR had grown from a single-interest, focused discipline into a systematic one covering a wide range of diverse topics. Consumer behavior, environmental impact, and motivating consumers toward sustainable consumption were the prominent research themes. Since 2015, journal articles and reviews on sustainable consumption have doubled, expanding and modifying the research knowledge base, necessitating a new and updated analysis. Similarly, Corsini et al. (2019) performed a bibliometrics review [28] of SCR, analyzing publications that use practice theories as the main theoretical framework. They found that SCR was becoming a dominant topic for academics investigating social practice theories, and highlighted trends since 2009. The review recommended social practice theories as an effective tool for understanding consumption behaviors, especially in the emerging fields associated with the circular and sharing economy and smart cities.

As an academic discipline, business process, or management philosophy, marketing always focuses on the needs and wants of customers [29] to satisfy individual and organizational objectives [30]. Since its inception as an application of economics [31], marketing was designed to create demand and satisfy those demands for constant economic growth [32]. Thus, marketing is blamed as being a “consumption engineer” [32], promoting consumption-based well-being and happiness [33], and a proponent of materialistic values [34,35] and compulsive buying [36,37]. The aforementioned are all antecedents to unsustainable consumption behaviors [38], showing marketing’s “inherent drive toward unsustainability” (p. 45, [39,40]).

As digital technologies have taken over most marketing functions [41,42], to survive and be relevant, marketing needs to reevaluate its fundamental precepts and reorient itself to building sustainable societies [41]. With the evolution of marketing itself [43,44], things have been changing as the sustainability of consumption is gaining prominence in the marketing literature [45,46], proposing transformative conceptual and managerial solutions [47,48]. However, as Lunde [49] pointed out, the marketing approach to sustainability lacks conceptual framing and theoretical clarity, resulting in unreliable approaches and even generating terms like “greenwashing” [50] or “the dark side of corporate social responsibility” [51], contributing to the general mistrust of marketing. Therefore, marketing needs to break new ground for conceptually sound solutions that can add to the SCR toward changing the consumption culture to make consumption sustainable [52].

One innovative way to make consumption sustainable is consuming mindfully [53–56], a method that, along with sustainability, promotes subjective well-being, pro-sociality, and greater connectedness to nature, and decreases materialistic values [57]. Fischer et al. [10] concluded that mindfulness is an innovative, powerful tool fostering pro-social behavior and disrupting unsustainable routines; they highly recommend including mindfulness in future SCR. Temperance in consumption, resulting from a mindful attitude, connects self-care with societal and ecological care [54] and adds to the consumer’s subjective well-being or quality of life, showing a direct relationship between sustainable behaviors and quality of life (QOL) [58].

By taking methodological inspiration from previous research and updating and extending their findings [10,25,27,28], this study takes a holistic review of the sustainable consumption literature using bibliometric analysis [59] and integrative review methods [60,61]. The review section will then present a categorization of the literature using three interdependent levels of analysis (micro, meso, and macro) applied by researchers to understand consumption behaviors. Using the three-level structure and their interdependencies and focusing on individual consumption behaviors, a consumer-centric research area based on the quality of life and mindfulness will be proposed for future marketing practice, to explore future consumption sustainability research in the changing paradigm [41,62]. By fostering a mindfulness mindset in consumers to enhance their QOL, marketing can make consumers enablers of sustainability without making them responsible for it. The following research questions will be addressed in this review:

RQ1:  What are the main features of the SCR literature, how has it evolved, and what are the conceptual similarities between its main features?

RQ2:  What are the different levels of analysis applied by scholars in SCR? The literature has explored what should be considered individual sustainable consumption behaviors; is there any conceptual connectivity between them?

RQ3:  What are the possible future research areas that marketing can explore within SCR to motivate individual consumers to consume more sustainably?

The review sourced SCR documents from the Scopus database using a search string composed by analyzing past reviews. These documents were analyzed with bibliometric tools [59] to answer RQ1, and a three-layer framework for the integrative review was composed using the results of the analysis. The framework was used to study the different levels applied by academics to developing SCR, highlighting their main features, strengths, and weaknesses [60,63] and to answer RQ2. Using the integrative review results, a mindfulness mindset-based sustainable consumption model was proposed, reframing sustainable consumption as a means of enhancing consumer life quality. For RQ3, marketing’s future role in SCR was discussed in the last section, with recommendations for its role in SCR development.

Discussion

The SCR literature shows the centrality of individual consumers in the proposed solutions and positions individual consumers as change actors, bringing significant change toward sustainability [22,70]. However, this argument relies on a few assumptions. The first assumption is that individual consumers can change consumption behaviors and consumption structures. Secondly, it is assumed that the individual consumer wants to change their consumption behaviors. Lastly, it is assumed that individual consumers want to be responsible for societal and ecological sustainability [332,333].

How can an individual consumer be motivated to consume sustainably? How can we develop intrinsic attitudes that make an individual consumer feel responsible for societal and ecological sustainability and be willing to be transformed into a sustainable consumer? How can consumers be empowered so that they do not feel powerless in adopting consumption sustainability? Most sustainability interventions make consumer transformative behavior an individual’s responsibility, possibly resulting in consumer resistance [152,334]. By building on the proposition made in the micro-level analysis, this review recommends mindful consumption for consumption sustainability. The recommendation repositions consumption sustainability as a path to a better quality of life [335], with consumers assuming responsibility for their QOL [336] where the aspiration for better QOL will motivate consumers to consume sustainably (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Mindfulness-based sustainable consumption model for a better quality of life for the consumer (based on Sheth et al. [54] mindful consumption model).

The model (Figure 1) shows how a mindfulness mindset can lead to enhanced QOL through sustainable consumption, with redefined standards of QOL and “self-care”, attaching “self-care” to ecological and social care and enhanced awareness for the well-being of the natural and social environments and a moderated attitude to the behavior gap [10]. The mindfulness mindset reforms the standards of QOL to a new form of “self-care” that is tied up with social and ecological well-being. The new “self-care”, with enhanced socio-ecological care and awareness, will encourage mindful consumption choices, leading to consumption sustainability [54]. Many of the WHOQOL [335] facets are related to the natural and social environment that we live in, and their well-being directly relates to our QOL betterment (see Appendix D). The new, mindful “self-care” will strive for the well-being of these environments, resulting in an improved QOL. Mindfulness mindsets offset habitual, impulsive, and compulsive behaviors through improved self-control, ameliorating the conversion of any sustainable consumption intentions to behaviors [228, 337].

By reorienting consumption sustainability as a means for better QOL, this review “removes” consumer responsibility from the consumption sustainability paradigm (Figure 1). Consumers are required and empowered to strive for their own QOL betterment. Attaching environmental and social care and enhancing individual life quality, the model aims to make socio-ecological improvement part of self-care. Self-care is based on a redefined QOL, skewed toward improving non-financial aspects of quality of life for better health, more profound social and ecological values, and working within the need for financial stability. The model is in line with weak sustainable change [15,22,49], working to change the consumption system from within the system.

The answer to RQ3 in terms of the possible research areas that marketing can explore for bringing about consumption sustainability will be based on the proposed sustainable consumption model (Figure 1) through a mindful mindset and behavior. To foster, nourish and encourage the mindful mindset and behaviors for sustainable consumption, the research needs to involve all three levels (micro, meso, and macro) and their interdependencies (Figure 1). However, the first step is marketing’s restructuring itself from just a demand growth discipline, moving away from short-term sales targets to become an advocate of societal and ecological sustainability for consumer QOL betterment [42].

Marketing, a meso-level entity, evolves according to its contextual factors to create value through the anticipation and satisfaction of consumer demand [42]. Marketing’s emphasis on demand creation has contributed to making materialistic consumerism a dominant force in our DSP [22,148,338]. With the displacement of marketing by digital technologies, scholars have called for marketing to refine its identity and to learn and adopt the ideas from multiple disciplines for collaborative research and development [41,42,57]. Marketing is urged to reposition itself from a growth generator of material consumption to an advocate of a non-materialistic-based QOL for individual, societal and ecological betterment [57,339]. Therefore, the first step in future contributions of marketing toward consumption sustainability will be conducting research on reorientating marketing itself. Social and sustainability marketing and transformative consumer marketing have to take a central stage inside the marketing paradigm and dominate marketing thinking (in both academics and practitioners). Future research in marketing must use all the knowledge accumulated in the past 100 years of demand creation toward demand redirection, by connecting individualism to collective well-being, replacing material goods with human connections, and converting mindlessness to mindfulness for qualitative consumption growth. Similarly, marketing communication, new product development, and digital marketing tools, mainly social media marketing, have to be reoriented to raise awareness and adopt a non-materialistic QOL.

The proposed sustainable consumption model (Figure 1) is a bottom-up model emphasizing changing individual mindsets and behaviors. Therefore, on the micro-level, future marketing research must focus on discovering ways to foster mindful mindsets within individual consumers, to make them more connected to their social and natural environment. By using personal well-being as a motivator and developing a feeling of care for ecology and society, marketing can engender endogenous sustainability values and empower consumers to be enablers of sustainability, countering any of the dark side of consumption (e.g., materialism and compulsive buying).

Mindfulness interventions have demonstrated effectiveness in fostering self-esteem and self-regulation in children [340]; both these traits can help mitigate materialistic values and mindsets [34,341]. Educational programs incorporating such interventions for children can shape their values and behaviors, encouraging them to become mindful consumers [342,343] and making them change agents for socio-ecological sustainability [344]. Using sustainable consumption communication [15] and social media influencers [345] to spread the concept more widely, marketing can popularize mindful consumption [54], reducing materialistic traits and leading to improved well-being and life satisfaction among citizens [341]. By empirically exploring methods that propagate mindfulness-based sustainability values on the micro level, marketing research can build a mindful society of mindful individuals who are conscious of their negative consumption impacts [161], finding non-materialistic avenues for QOL improvement.

A mindful society needs sustainable products and services to support and facilitate a mindful and sustainable lifestyle. Future product development by marketing warrants that sustainable products should come with minimum or no extra cost, whether financial or otherwise. Service-dominant logic [346,347] emphasizes service and resource integration for value co-creation and promises a sound theoretical base for marketing to develop sustainable solutions. On the meso level, future sustainable marketing communication needs to promote lifestyles based on deeper human connections rather than hedonic consumption practices to achieve a society of mindful individuals. A mindful marketing practitioner, for example, can enable circular consumption [348,349] by developing new products that are easy to reuse and repair. Individuals with a mindfulness mindset form the social rules and regulations and develop social norms, resulting in social consumption practices [130,260,304,306] with a higher probability of having a sustainable structure.

Mindful individuals functioning within the sustainable consumption structures will have the capability to reform the macro institutions of culture, market, and governance. As the proposed model (Figure 1) has a bottom-up approach, marketing can advance sustainable values from micro to meso and macro levels by encouraging mindful consumers, reinforcing their sustainable values. Encouragement comes by developing methods to recognize the contribution made by mindful consumers to socio-ecological sustainability and project them as role models. Reinforcement requires developing more solutions that help in mindful consumption choices and supporting mindful social practices. This is a time-consuming but proven way for marketing to alter customs, values, and traditions on a societal level to change the consumption culture.

Macro-level market research for consumption sustainability in the future needs to investigate how the political and policymaking entities can be mobilized to promote mindful and sustainable consumption practices, as a challenge to the DSP [148]. The DSP is the result of three centuries of economic and political policies and cultural practices, and disrupting it will be a slow process. Therefore, marketing must find the most optimal techniques that can disrupt these practices from within the system. Politicizing the sustainability issue [22] can be an effective strategy for discussing sustainability on political forums, thus involving more consumer segments. Promoting mindful and sustainable lifestyles using social media can create opinions and generate dialog on a national, regional, and community level and may generate organic ideas of adopting mindful lifestyles for sustainability. Thus, on the macro level, marketing can act as a catalyst for sustainable lifestyle adoption by positioning itself as a dialog forum and promoting the example set by mindful individuals and their lives. To summarize, future marketing research for consumption sustainability should:

• Refine marketing fundamentals toward societal well-being as their primary goal.
• Help consumers to redefine their QOL, educating and encouraging them to undertake mindful consumption practices.
• Arrange logistics that encourage and facilitate a mindful mindset by developing products and technologies and composing rules and regulations that foster, nourish and encourage mindful consumption.
• Facilitate the movement of the mindful mindset from the micro level to the meso level and, thence, to the macro level.

Practical Implications

For a better QOL, developing a mindfulness mindset on a societal scale and reframing sustainable consumption as a means of QOL enhancement is required. By reforming its fundamentals from an economic growth generator, marketing as an academic discipline and business process can use the model in Figure 1 for consumer QOL enhancement. Marketing academics can apply the model to creating educational content that trains young people to develop a mindfulness mindset and be aware of the factors that enhance consumer well-being. The model can provide a strategic basis for marketing practitioners to develop campaigns that motivate consumers to become active participants in their transformation process, enhancing their QOL by making them aware of the benefits of sustainable consumption. Policymakers can utilize this model to facilitate and cultivate a societal mindfulness mindset that incentivizes sustainable consumption for the betterment of consumer QOL.

Limitations

The bibliometric analysis was based on the Scopus database; therefore, any influential articles outside the reach of Scopus were missed. A review based on multiple databases may provide additional findings. Secondly, the bibliometrics methodology is based on citation analysis. Bibliometrics analysis assumes that any highly cited paper is useful, even if that paper is cited for the purpose of disputing claims or results [350]. The bibliometric analysis will be biased toward older articles and more senior authors [168] with a higher citation count, neglecting newly published articles. The descriptive analysis of SCR showed that most of the SCR articles (55%) had been published since 2017. Most papers need time to become recognized and receive citation counts. Most new articles do not significantly impact the bibliometric analysis, due to the low number of citations, adding to this review the limitations of missing innovative ideas from recent articles.

Conclusions

The review was conducted to find the future role of marketing in sustainable consumption research. The review employed a bibliometric technique to analyze the structure of sustainable consumption research literature. It identified four major schools of thought or clusters. The bibliometric analysis also revealed three different layers of scholarship: individual or micro level, social-organizational structural or meso level, and system or macro level; thus, categorizing the literature into three micro, meso, and macro contextual levels. Rather than using identified clusters from the bibliometric analysis for the integrative analysis, a method generally followed in bibliometric studies, this review used the three contextual layers as a framework for the integrative review levels of SCR literature to systematically analyze concepts, ideas, and phenomena.

The integrative review discussed the three layers of the literature to understand how researchers have looked at the consumption process, how it affects and is affected by contextual factors and the behaviors employed by consumers toward becoming sustainable. An integrative review proposed a mindful consumption model that can be used as an umbrella term to describe most of the sustainable consumption behaviors discussed in the SCR literature. The integrative review also showed how the three layers are interdependent; thus, any research on consumption sustainability must be holistic and consider all the micro, meso, and macro factors when proposing solutions, to make consumption sustainable.

The SCR literature shows a centrality of individual consumers in terms of the proposed solutions. This approach assumes that individual consumers can change their consumption behaviors and structures, individual consumers want to change their consumption behaviors, and individual consumers want to be responsible for societal and ecological sustainability. Nevertheless, this approach has produced very few changes in consumption practices and has deterred consumers from adopting sustainable consumption behaviors. Individual consumers need an intrinsic motivator that can substitute consumption experience for becoming sustainable. This review proposed a QOL betterment model, considering a mindfulness mindset as the motivator that inspires individuals to consume sustainably. Aspiration to a better QOL will motivate individual consumers at the micro level to be mindfully aware of their social and ecological environment and to connect their personal well-being to socio-ecological well-being and, as a result, to refine their consumption practices.

Marketing’s nature as a value creator can play the role of a change agent to increase the QOL of consumers and bring about socio-ecological sustainability. This can happen by fostering mindfulness mindsets, training consumers in mindful consumption practices, and providing them with an infrastructure to facilitate mindful consumption. Using the proposed model, this review recommends that marketing organizations should research methods of refining and readjusting their fundamental tenets to promote qualitative consumption, which can reform the consumer’s mindset regarding progress, based on pro-social and pro-ecological choices. The sustainable world requires a mindfulness mindset in all sections of society. Marketing researchers must find ways to foster mindful mindsets on the micro-level and, using a bottom-up approach, diffuse these non-materialistic mindfulness mindsets to the meso and macro levels of society for a holistic change regarding sustainability.

Complete text, review findings and analysis can be viewed at  https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/7/3999/htm

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/su14073999