Innovations to advance sustainability behaviours

Accelerated (manmade) climate change, and its accompanying waste and resource depletion are triggering an unprecedented serious human and ecological crisis. As a result, climate scientists are increasingly stressing the urgent need for human behaviours associated with consumption to significantly change before the planet reaches an ecological tipping point. Decades of research exploring how to advance sustainability behaviours are, however, having a limited effect. This is not surprising; changing behaviour is inherently difficult. Innovative research thinking is therefore needed to aid the progression of sustainability behaviours across all facets of the service industries. This focus on services is particularly pertinent given developed western economies are inherently service orientated, and this orientation is growing rapidly in emerging economies too. The environmental and human impact of services production and consumption is thus predicted to match and possibly exceed that of the manufacturing industry, where much of the negative ecological and human harm has historically been attributed.

The goal of this special issue is to offer a collection of distinctive yet interconnected research articles that offer innovative theory-led thinking to advance sustainability behaviours among organisations and consumers within the service industries. From their varied cultural, conceptual and methodological perspectives the authors explore, disassemble, reconstruct and reappraise the environmental, human, societal and economic building blocks of sustainability that are needed to enable organisations, communities, individuals and ecology to thrive into the future. They have no magic answers. No quick fixes. These articles, through their converging theories across the service industries, focus on the challenges ahead, and what is necessary to advance sustainability behaviours into the future.

This collection is organised into two themes, commencing with advancing organisational thinking on sustainability behaviours within the service industries. The second theme progresses understanding of consumers engagement with environmental sustainability, human sustainability, and ethical choice making with respect to the services they consume.

Launching the first theme on organisational thinking, the opening paper from Mark S. Rosenbaum, Germán Contreras Ramírez and Nancy Matos, ‘A neuroscientific perspective on consumer responses to retail greenery’, brings two principal theories together ‘borrowed’ from the natural and life sciences. These are biophilia (greenery) interlinked with attention restoration theory (ART) and secondly, neuroscience. Biophilia and ART illustrate the potential environmental and health restorative and well-being benefits of exposure to nature on the behaviours of consumers in retailing settings with constructed ‘green spaces’. The addition of neuroscience extends this novel theory building and the methodological rigour that underpins it. Specifically, the authors claim using EEG to capture subconscious brain activation data moves the biophilia and ART research scholarship beyond an evolutionary to a bodily perspective. This study, set within America, finds that greenery can stimulate neural activities associated with excitement, interest and engagement – all vital elements of engaged customer relationships with retailers, as well as restorative health benefits, including stress-reduction, that are inherent to human health and well-being. Rosenbaum, Ramírez and Matos therefore progress understanding of the influence of emotions and the human subconscious on consumer’s behavioural interactions in retail spaces employing biophilic design that facilitate a connection with nature. This is important because this human–nature connectivity is recognised by social scientists as a principal influence in progressing consumer and organisational sustainability behaviours.

The second article, authored by Yi Wang, Si Shi, Yang Chen and Dogan Gursoy, ‘An examination of market orientation and environmental marketing strategy: The case of Chinese firms’, aims to advance theorisation of market-orientated environmental sustainability. The authors extend understanding of the complexities involved in substantiating and integrating environmental ideology into the strategies and actions of services SMEs in emerging markets like China that are transitioning into market-orientated economies. They contend a market orientation is important because it can enable an environmental marketing strategy that reflects long-term commitment to environmental sustainability. Accordingly, they theorise and test the impact of market orientation on environmental marketing strategy. Primarily they evaluate the relationship between market orientation and environmental marketing strategy, moderated by environmental corporate identity, and the impact of this relationship on a firm’s performance. Their findings indicate market orientation functions as an enabler because it significantly influences the environmental marketing strategies when moderated by identity. Hence, Wang, Shi, Chen and Gursoy progress theorisation of environmental marketing strategy by highlighting how market orientation functions as a vital enabler of organisations engagement with environmental issues (environmental corporate identity) that are integrated into their strategies to facilitate cooperation between internal and external stakeholders for collective long-term environmental engagement. The strategic importance of proactive environmental marketing strategy to transformation and innovation in services organisations operating amidst the tensions of economic growth and environmental challenges is thus confirmed.

The third article, ‘Fostering sustainable performance in services through systems thinking’, is authored by Ayham A. M. Jaaron and Chris J. Backhouse. They uniquely investigate the impact of systems thinking on service operations design entailing the triple bottom line of service organisations sustainable performance. In so doing, their study aims to increase understanding of the complex, multidimensional and dynamic interactions within and across service organisations environmental, social and economic sustainable performance. The findings confirm the value of systems thinking in identifying the significant direct impact of social and environmental performance, but not economic performance directly. This suggests the variable influence of these three elements of sustainable performance on service system design. Overall, this study proffers a more nuanced view to reconceptualising sustainable performance for both theory building and for practice. It highlights the importance of service system design directly linked to enhanced environmental and social benefits and indirectly to economic benefits. Further, it is among the first generation of studies to signal economic performance is conditional upon the environmental and social facets of sustainable performance. The authors conclude by considering how service managers can apply systems thinking to service operations design to enhance employee–customer relationships and the opportunities for service organisations operating within a social, environmental and economic sustainable performance nexus.

The fourth article examines organisational thinking focuses on sustainability challenges for service organisations in emerging economies with complex economic, environmental and human problems. These organisations are learning to operate in a highly competitive marketplace to maintain their economic sustainability for human and environmental good. Authored by Janthorn Sinthupundaja, N. Chiadamrong and Y. Kohda, this article, ‘Internal capabilities, external cooperation and proactive CSR on financial performance’, focuses on proactive corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the service industries in Thailand. Service provider’s engagement with proactive CSR is of interest because it can facilitate translation of their social and environmental responsibilities into competitive advantage. Extending current scholarship, this study explores the importance of the causal combinations of knowledge-acquisition conditions (i.e. internal capabilities) and external partner and customer cooperation on the level of proactive CSR engagement and firm performance in six ‘knowledge embedded’ sectors of the Thai service industry. Utilising fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, the findings confirm the importance of knowledge-acquisition practices to support proactive CSR as a strategic mechanism for enhanced and sustainable financial performance. CSR is typically viewed as a cost by Thai organisations attempting to compete within resource and infrastructure constraints. However, this study indicates that while engaging in proactive CSR is not cost free, with help from knowledge-acquisition capabilities and cooperation, it is a viable strategy for creating competitive advantage. Thus, it can make an important contribution to achieving higher economic performance, and thus economic sustainability in the Thai service industries. This is not to suggest that this engagement is easy. Various pathways involving knowledge capabilities and cooperation are identified to enable services managers and decision makers to foster social and environmental responsibility strategies, via proactive CSR, in order to strengthen economically sustainable financial performance.

Moving to the second theme focusing on consumer engagement with sustainability and ethics, the fifth article uniquely examines the extent to which cognitive biases can impede consumers’ adoption of environmental innovation services. In ‘Digital nudging to overcome cognitive resistance in innovation adoption decisions’, Carola Stryja and Gerhard Satzger propose consumers’ adoption of electric cars (renting an e-car) is dependent on their degree of cognitive bias that can maintain mainstream habitual choices and trigger resistance to the offerings of eco-innovation services. In particular, they extend theorisation of cognitive bias by demonstrating the negative effects of these biases (e.g. loss aversion and omission of action bias) on the likelihood of consumers’ eco-innovation adoption. Further, they appraise if choice architecture like digital nudging can overcome this cognitive resistance to increase the prospect of consumers’ e-car adoption. Conducted within Germany, their experimental findings indicate the likelihood of consumers’ e-car rental adoption can be reduced by as much as 44% as a result of these biases, particularly omission of action bias. Thus, consumers appear to resist changing their normalised rental vehicle choice behaviours (i.e. petrol/diesel cars) to avoid risky and unfamiliar consequences (i.e. using electric charging points for e-cars). While this study leaves the de-biasing effects of digital nudging open to further investigation, the findings confirm nudging can increase consumers’ positive reactions to eco-innovation choice making. Accordingly, Stryja and Satzger extend understanding of the cognitive nature of consumer resistance, choice architecture and nudging within an environmental innovation context. With respect to eco-innovation service providers, their study suggests alternate behaviours inherent to innovation should be underplayed to mitigate consumer’s fear of behaviour change and the risks this brings.

The sixth article ‘Continued use of wearables for well-being with a cultural probe’ focuses on technology’s influence on sustainability behaviours. Positioned from a human sustainability perspective, the authors Fu-ren Lin and Nila Armelia Windasari explore what makes people improve their health behaviour through their continued use of fitness-tracker wearable devices. They also appraise the role of human agency in the continued use of these wearables and its quality-of-life effects. Furthermore, they consider the implications for designing wearable health services targeting different user segments. Recognising the methodological demands of measuring behaviour change, this study used a qualitative-longitudinal cultural probe technique with nationals and foreigners living in Taiwan to capture participant’s fitness-tracker user data used within their normal living environment. This was supported by interviews to probe this data more fully. The study revealed four clusters of consumer types displaying varied and fluid agency in the use, engagement and management of personal fitness for sustainable health well-being. Accordingly, this study extends theorisation of how efficacy shapes health behaviour in preference to behavioural intention that does not necessarily lead to healthier quality-of-life. This finding is in line with sustainability behaviour studies. More specifically, Lin and Windasari explain how the agency of wearable devices interplays with different roles of self and technological-efficacy, where high technological-efficacy correlates with high engagement with wearable devices, and vice versa. Thus, they highlight the importance of understanding the actor (human)-to-actor (device) relationship, where devices can serve as an object, assistant or companion to human health management. In turn, their study suggests providers of wearable health services should tailor their devices and accompanying services with adaptive features that serve the differing efficacy and engagement needs of users. For example using interactive design for users with low self-efficacy, high-end technological designs for users with high technological-efficacy and support services (e.g. personal assistants) for users with low technological-efficacy.

The seventh and final article considers how consumers engage with an organisation’s ethical traits in their service brand choices. Eileen Bridges, Mary Schramm and Abhik Roy in their article ‘Consumer choices among service brands offering ethical attributes’, examine American consumer evaluations of constellations of service brand attributes that do and do not influence consumer’s ethical evaluation of brands. The authors are particularly interested in better understanding what consumers are willing to give up in choosing a service brand they perceive as ethical, and under what circumstances. As such, they contribute to the small number of studies considering this consumer trade-off behaviour in the service industries. Located within two distinct services – banking (low contact) and healthcare (high contact) – this study utilised a conjoint design survey with rigorous multiple data analysis modelling to ascertain if consumers use compensatory or non-compensatory choice models. The findings confirm consumers do use a compensatory decision model where a range of desirable service brand attributes are available. Thus, they make trade-offs between brand attributes, rather than considering these attributes one at a time in order of their importance. Secondly, the findings signal consumers are willing to trade-off desirable ethical brand attributes in favour of more desirable but non-ethical service brand attributes. With respect to the core research question of what consumers are willing to give up in their trade-offs, this study uniquely reveals consumers place greater importance on ethics-related brand attributes in the low contact banking context, than in a high contact setting like healthcare. Bridges, Schramm and Roy suggest low contact service providers could enhance customer value by building-in brand attributes that enhance consumers’ perceptions of organisational ethics. In contrast, high contact service providers would benefit more from improving desirable brand attributes directly related to enriching customer experiences. Fuller investigation of this behaviour offers a rich area for future research on consumer’s ethical choice making and the emerging topic of service contact levels.

The collection of articles in this special issue, in sum, provides a useful starting point for innovative theory-led and transformative services research focusing on the behavioural change agenda to advance sustainability behaviours among organisations and consumers. This interconnected focus on producers and consumers of services is vital to strengthening the research body to propose ‘turning points’ spanning ecological, human and economic sustainability. In this respect the goal of this special issue has been met.

Hopefully this collection will also stimulate further innovative research on this issue. If so, then its wider ambition has been put into play. If you need further encouragement, these are our thoughts. Neuroscience offers huge possibilities for research advancement. In the name of sustainability, how far are we willing to go in our investigation of human emotions and the subconscious? Utilising this science, should the service industries progress a connection with nature that encourages more environmentally or ethically responsible consumption behaviours, or indeed curtails consumption altogether? How can researchers more fully engage with the organisational complexities of advancing sustainability behaviours through responsible economic performance and market-orientated environmental sustainability? Is this complexity different for service organisations within emerging economies? Thus, what specifically do we need to comprehend and implement regarding their economic, environmental and human problems in both developed and emerging economies? The theories of market orientation, systems thinking and proactive CSR appear to be very progressive in this respect. However, what more do we need to understand about the role of economics and the nature of markets within sustainability (given the contentions that currently exist)? Can we push market orientation, systems and CSR thinking, or indeed go beyond them to advance a new generation of service organisations that increasingly go beyond the status quo? Perhaps consumers will shift to more sustainable behaviours with the aid of eco-tracker devices, akin to household smart meters? What is really preventing them from switching away from their habitual behaviours into the less-known territories of eco-services extending beyond e-cars? How much are consumers really willing to give up and how can we normalise these trade-offs for stronger sustainability behaviours? Perhaps this is all the realms of imagination? We hope not. We leave you to continue to debate. … 

We extend our thanks to the editor-in-chief Professor Levent Altinay for the opportunity to guest edit this special issue. We also thank the authors, reviewers, and editorial staff for their efforts in creating this thought-provoking issue that blends theory-led insight into organisational and consumer sustainability behaviours and the wealth of opportunities for future research they proffer.