The influence of education on sustainable purchasing decisions of European citizens

Nowadays, the discussion about issues related to the environment has steadily increased. Media, economic and political powers argue about global warming and climate change. Parliamentary assemblies and world conferences try to promote manoeuvres pro-environment and to delineate guide lines to decrease pollution. Nevertheless, in the majority of cases, it is difficult to implement a common agreement, due to different interests and economic situations of countries. Therefore, the role associated to single individuals assumes great importance. If every consumer engages itself in achieving a sustainable behaviour, for instance, by recycling, by avoiding wastes, by purchasing sustainable products and so on, it can provide its contribute to the environmental preservation. This study wants to identify the role of consumers in the sustainable development by analysing their purchasing decisions. Specifically, the main relationship of the analysis refers to the influence of education on purchasing decisions of sustainable products. Past literature reveals that this demographic has an influence on the buying decisions of consumers. This analysis, through the study of the Flash Eurobarometer Survey No. 256 released in 2009, wants to demonstrate the relation between level of education and purchasing decisions and to provide an additional contribute to the literature by exploring whether the influence of education differs across different types of sustainable products. Specifically, the relationship between education and the purchasing decision of general sustainable products is firstly studied. Then, the influence of education on eco-labelled and energy efficient products is analysed, by providing assumptions that the effect of education is expected to be stronger for energy efficient products than ecolabelling.