Environmental interest and consumption culture in Russia

<div>The number of people who are interested in environmental friendly consumption rise gradually. Young people, concerned about environmental problems, turn to environment friendly lifestyle. They consciously incorporate environmental friendly practices in their consumption. Together with them there are people who also have environmental friendly practices in their consumption; however the reason for this is not environment concern but other concerns (financial or moral). And there is a contradiction: consumption practices of the people who are concerned about environment and those who are not can be rather similar. Our research question is to understand which environmental friendly consumption cultures exist, and how practices of people concerned and not concerned about environment differs. Under consumption culture the aggregation of three parts is implied: 1) set of consumption practices, that person has, 2) his motivation to have these practices in his life, 3) his attitude towards environmental friendly consumption and his willingness to incorporate it in his life. The aim of our research is to understand which types of environmental friendly consumption exist and how they differ among people with various levels of environmental interest. To fulfill this aim 21 interviews were conducted with two groups of people: those who are concerned about environment and those who act in the scope of rationality and out of financial reasons. Interviews help us to understand which environmental friendly practices people have now, what will motivate people to have environmental friendly practices in their consumption and under which circumstances they will do it. We will also see how consumption culture of people with high environmental interest differs from other people. We found out that environmental practices to a certain extend are incorporated into all of interviewees &ndash; the reason for it is interconnection of environmental friendly practices and rational practices. However the number of practices varies greatly among people with high environmental interest and low environmental interest. Most of the interviewed people have positive attitude towards environment and are ready to affect it positively with their actions. Most effective measures for change in behavior, according to respondents are fiscal measures. However many respondents are ready to change their behavior without strict fiscal measures. Creation of infrastructure that allows environmental friendly behavior seems for people to be enough for changing their consumption practices. The example of such infrastructure: eco-shops, garbage bin for separate garbage collection near the house, places for clothes\stuff charity. If this infrastructure will be supported by social marketing e. g. on TV, in transport, in parks effect is supposed to be higher.</div>