Presenting an integrated framework for ‘sustainable consumption’ linking consumers, businesses, and government

The university announced that Professor Cho Hee-tae's research team in the Department of Sports Science comprehensively analyzed the link between sustainable consumption and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and, based on this, developed an integrated framework that unites consumers, businesses, and government.

Recently, as environmental problems facing the Earth, such as global warming, resource depletion, and waste problems, have become more serious, the UN has set 17 ‘Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’ for a sustainable future for humanity and is encouraging participation from around the world. However, existing studies often treated individual consumers' efforts such as using eco-friendly products or reusable products, companies' eco-friendly products and supply chain strategies, and government carbon taxes and environmental regulations separately. Accordingly, there were limitations in comprehensively explaining the process by which individual practices lead to sustainability of the entire society through corporate change and policy support.

In order to compensate for these limitations, Professor Cho Hee-tae's research team conducted a detailed analysis of big data from a total of 225 international academic papers and uncovered a systematic connection between consumers' eco-friendly behavior and the global sustainable development goals. Through data analysis, the research team derived four key research topics: ▲sustainable resource management and environmental protection ▲sustainable supply chain dynamics ▲behavioral factors as catalysts for achieving SDGs ▲eco-action-policy linkage.

Furthermore, the research team applied the ‘Systems Thinking’ approach, which states that all components influence each other like cogs. Through this, we developed an integrated framework at the micro, meso, and macro levels where consumers, businesses, and government interact. Eco-friendly behavior such as consumer emotions and values, environmental education, habit formation, and gamification promotes product and technological innovation of companies, leading to improvements in policies such as government carbon taxes, subsidies, and environmental labeling, and this policy support presents a circular structure in which consumers expand sustainable choices.

This showed that sustainable consumption is not achieved through individual ethical choices alone, but that the goal can be achieved in reality when consumer behavior change, corporate strategic innovation, and government institutional support are organically combined. Additionally, by directly linking sustainable consumption research to the SDGs, it also provided directions for how other research should be expanded in the future.

Professor Cho Hee-tae, who oversaw the research, said, "This study is significant in that it brings together sustainable consumption, which has been studied separately, and provides clear guidance on how eco-friendly behavior practiced by individuals in their daily lives should be organically linked to corporate management strategies and government policies." He added, "It will be a useful practical guide for future policy makers and companies to actually achieve the SDGs goals by 2030."

※ Paper title: Advancing Consumer Studies Through a Systematic Review of Sustainable Consumption and Sustainable Development Goals

※ Academic journal: Business Strategy and the Environment

※ Paper link: https://doi.org/10.1002/bse.71178