Sustainability consciousness

Fabric
5 min readSep 3, 2024

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To understand conscious consumers, we can start with one of the most common purchases there is today — a cup of coffee.

Applying a simple value framework of price, quality, and convenience to describe choices around coffee, we can start to understand how conscious consumers become aware of the impact a coffee producer can have on their local environment and the people they employ.

Our consumer — let’s call them Hana — isn’t going to give up on coffee, but is curious about finding varieties of coffee beans that don’t come with deforestation and child labour, which is part of how Hana personally defines quality for the product.

Finding a coffee shop with similar conscious beliefs becomes important, with a barista who can match Hana’s preferences to a sustainably certified bean the shop has in stock, representing convenience.

And as this proposition meets expectations, Hana is happy to pay a price premium of around 10–15% to continue to enjoy coffee.

This demonstrates three key principles that underpin sustainable transformation of a category:

  1. Hana is conscious of a sustainability issue that the category impacts;
  2. The brand provides an increase in quality of a product or service in this area; and
  3. Hana engages with that brand, consciously making a connection between the proposition and the issue.

This story can be contrasted with Hana’s friend — let’s call them Hiro — who chooses the exact same coffee because of the design of the label.

Although the transaction is the same, Hiro isn’t an example of a conscious consumer because there isn’t a sustainability connection made. By not engaging with the sustainable part of the proposition, Hiro didn’t recognise that as part of the decision making around quality.

Hana sees the social and environmental impact in the moment, while Hiro doesn’t. Both can become loyal customers, but Hiro could easily switch to competitors that replicate the design and taste of the coffee.

This means sustainability is a fundamental differentiator for brands, and can become a key part of the value proposition for their customers. This starts with consciousness.

If we know how many consumers have the potential to make conscious choices of this kind, it becomes a valuable measure of Japan’s state of readiness for sustainable brand propositions, as well as the potential of shared value creation throughout the entire economy. The challenge is in quantifying this.

Scoring sustainability consciousness

This quantification is what the Sustainability Consciousness Score was designed to do. It starts with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), grouping the 17 goals into 6 core dimensions:

  1. Support basic living needs;
  2. Promote economic and technological development;
  3. Promote social development;
  4. Achieve a more equal society;
  5. Manage environmental resources; and
  6. Conserve the natural world.

This is an important pillar of our data, as it reduces the complexity of the SDGs into a workable set, allowing us to understand how different consumer groups relate to sustainability issues, as well as how much they trust brands to deliver on them.

This doesn’t mean we lose this context, instead it humanises the SDGs into statements that our 6,800 participants can agree or disagree with on scales, across areas of personal, societal, and environmental.

From this we can assign scores to each respondent, through a representative set of the Japanese population between the ages of 15–69, identifying their sustainability consciousness.

Sustainability consciousness groups

There are five groups that emerge based on their level of consciousness, with natural cut off points between them.

Hana, our sustainably conscious consumer, is most likely to be in the Light (19%) or Moderate **(12%) **groups. Light people are only conscious in some areas, while Moderates are getting to a broader awareness — the people already making sustainable connections for everyday purchases like coffee. People who identify as women make up around 60% of these groups.

We don’t define High (3%) consciousness people as the only ones able to engage with sustainable propositions, although they are the most likely to be making these choices. The High group are a minority of the population, and are unlikely to represent a large proportion of any but the most extreme sustainable actions.

The Low **(63%) **consciousness group are the mainstream who are yet to join the dots around sustainability. Hiro, our design-led consumer, is likely in this group — who we emphasise aren’t against sustainability, they just don’t prioritise it. People who identify as men are a slight majority in the low group.

The Negative (3%) group are characterised by disinterest and rejection of the ideas that underpin sustainability, across a broad range of issues. They make up a very small proportion of the population, and only have a limited relevance, so we haven’t explored this group at depth.

With consciousness defined in this way, with principles that define sustainable engagement between a brand and consumer, and five consumer groups along a spectrum — we have the foundation to understand how our conscious consumers are driving brand futures.

Mainstream shifts

With our annual studies, we are able to track levels of sustainability consciousness over time, across a range of metrics. The biggest changes between 2021–2022 were shifts at the lower end of the spectrum, with several million people moving from the negative to the Low group, and an upward shift within the low group.

This is significant due to the size of the population involved, indicating there has been a shift in education among mass audiences over this period. The media usage of the low group is weighted towards TV, and they are likely to have been influenced by regular sustainability and SDG content across news, documentaries, and advertising.

The upward shift for the entire population is significant but not dramatic, with the peak and median shifting up one point on the scale.

At the current rate of change we would have to wait until around 2030 for the peak in population to sit in the middle of the spectrum.

Transitions like these are rarely steady, and they tend to hit a tipping point that triggers a mainstream shift.

Consciousness by dimension

We can also consider sustainability consciousness by intersecting generation with the six dimensions of sustainability — with a key pattern emerging around the expansion of consciousness with age. While the difference between younger generations is negligible, this expands out with Generation X, and again with Baby Boomers.

Baby Boomer sustainability consciousness exceeds all groups in all areas, with ‘promote social development’, ‘conserve the natural world’, and ‘manage environmental resources’ out in front. Only achieve a ‘more equal society’ is relatively close between all the generational groups.

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Fabric
Fabric

Written by Fabric

We’re a Strategic Design and Sustainability consultancy helping businesses move towards more innovative, sustainable futures. https://fbrc.co

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