New Year as a Moment of Change in Pro-Environmental Product Consumption: evaluating the habit discontinuity and self-activation hypotheses using a large UK retail dataset

Abstract

Introduction: The New Year, and the New Year’s Resolution tradition, may establish January as a moment of personal change: when there could be a temporal landmark for making a “fresh start,” a habit discontinuity, and value activation. As such, January may afford opportunities for personal pro-environmental lifestyle changes, such as by changing product choices.

Method: To investigate this empirically, we analyzed existing data from a 2016 survey of retail customers (N = 12,968) linked to 35 months of their sales data (2012–2015) provided by a leading healthcare retailer in the United Kingdom. We compared sales in January to those in other months, focusing on sales of green product varieties and overall product sales (as a dematerialization indicator), and sales of two self-enhancing health product types (nicotine replacement therapy products and weight reduction products) for comparison.

Results: Our results confirmed that sales of self-enhancing health products were greater in January than in other months, but we found limited evidence for pro-environmental consumption in January, and no evidence to support the habit discontinuity or value activation hypotheses.

Discussion: We discuss these results with respect to behavior change intervention potential and moments of change theory.