Bridging Theory and Practice in Sustainability Marketing

Editors

• A. R. Shaheen Hosany, Hult International Business School
• Seongsoo Jang, Cardiff University

Description

The escalating environmental crisis is reshaping consumer behaviour across food, fashion, entertainment and travel. Despite widespread awareness of sustainability issues, consumers struggle to translate their environmental values into consistent sustainable practices due to affordability, convenience, infrastructure and competing priorities constraints. This special issue seeks research that moves beyond examining intentions and attitudes to investigate how sustainability is actually enacted and experienced in real-world contexts.

The gap between sustainability theory and practice presents an opportunity for meaningful knowledge creation. Researchers are encouraged to explore how sustainability challenges can inform theoretical development while rigorous theory can guide practitioners in designing effective interventions. The issue welcomes diverse methodological approaches including qualitative, quantitative, experimental and mixed-methods research that illuminates the lived realities of sustainable consumption and examines the role of marketing in enabling genuine behavioural and systemic change.

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Potential topics

• Consumers, everyday practices and sustainability transitions - How climate vulnerability reshapes consumer identities, aspirations, routines, lifestyles and consumption practices
• How social influence, norms, communities and cultural contexts shape environmental sustainability
• Consumer willingness to sacrifice and pay for sustainability, and cost distribution across stakeholders
• Environmental constraints stimulating repair, reuse, sharing and non-consumption
• Emerging forms of consumption, access, sharing, circularity and non-consumption
• Firms, brands, innovation and circular consumption - Translating sustainability theory into products, services and business models
• Designing products and systems that make sustainable practices feasible, affordable and convenient
• Marketing strategy enabling repair, reuse, circular consumption and product life extension
• Marketing contributing to systemic change rather than individual consumer responsibility
• Sustainability, inequality and systemic transformation - Moving beyond individual behavioural change to systemic transformation
• Cost distribution of sustainability transitions across stakeholders
• How inequalities shape consumer capacity for sustainability participation
• Marketing contribution to sustainability policy design and evaluation
• Digital technologies, marketing communications and behavioural change - Digital technologies and AI facilitating sustainable consumption transitions
• Social media, influencers and digital platforms shaping sustainability perceptions and behaviours
• Digital marketing enabling behavioural change without increasing burden or manipulation
• Creating conditions enabling sustainable behaviour beyond persuasion
• Real-world evidence, experimental research and methodological approaches - Using transaction data and behavioural datasets to reveal actual consumption
• Causal impact of sustainability marketing interventions on consumer behaviour
• Natural experiments using climate disruptions and environmental regulations
• Data-driven discovery using digital and computational data
• Mixed-methods approaches integrating qualitative, quantitative and real-world data