Bridging the Sustainability Value-Action Gap
Boost brand success by better understanding consumer motivations
Lots of people want to live a more sustainable life. But they don’t. Despite efforts from governments, society and brands, the gap between what we say and what we do appears as unbridgeable as ever.
This report is based on a new premise designed to help close that value-action gap. We’ve not asked people what actions they do/don’t do but focused on what it takes to make them change behaviours.
The goal is to help brands address the frictions to change.
Our new work identifies seven clear groups, each of which needs a different approach to nudging their behaviour so that it is more aligned with their values. Understanding these nuances will help drive sustainable behaviour change and support brand growth.
In this report, we’ll explain why this new breakdown is so essential and profile our seven groups, revealing how you can appeal to each and how the right message will predispose more people.
These groups will vary in size by market and by sector. But one truth is constant for brands of any size: addressing consumer frictions can help you shape your brand for the future.
The value-action gap
The value-action gap is a phenomenon where people act in a way that’s inconsistent with, contradicts or fails to support their values.
In sustainability terms that means they are buying products or services that don’t match what they say is important. That is a risk to brands as consumers might reject the brand or look elsewhere for solutions.
But these gaps are also an opportunity for brands. What if your brand could develop a solution that changed their behaviour? You’d immediately open up a huge growth opportunity. There is also a proven link between brands that receive positive praises from consumers on sustainability efforts and brand Demand Power.
By diving into what respondents claim to hold true as their values and comparing it to their actions, brands can more easily determine where consumers find frictions in matching the two.
They can then provide solutions that facilitate an easier transition to adopting more sustainable practices. In doing so, they can not only close the value-action gap for consumers but also for businesses as the lack of accessible sustainable products is a key friction for many.
Much research and thought leadership has been done on the value-action gap, but it remains stubbornly persistent in many categories.
Why behaviour change matters
Closing the value-action gap is critical if society is to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. Many of us, particularly in the rich west, need to live a more sustainable lifestyle, especially as population growth continues.
When it comes to climate change, for example, Project Drawdown highlights the power of behaviour change in helping society reach Net Zero: “Individual and household actions have the potential to produce 25-30% of the total emissions reductions needed.”
So it’s not enough to identify the scale of the value-action gap, we need to know how to bridge the gap and the best way to do this is by identifying the behaviours and barriers that are stopping consumers taking action.
The output in this report is a much more granular look at what’s holding back real change.
1 Project Drawdown2 Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
Our methodology
In previous Kantar sustainability work, we have used the large Sustainability Sector Index dataset covering more than 30 markets.
This time we needed additional depth, so focused on six markets, spanning different geographical regions and chosen in order to cover different regions and cultures. The markets selected are: The US, The UK, South Africa, India, The Philippines and Singapore, with their results then tested across a wider geographical range.
Our survey was designed covering attitudes, values and behaviours, including differently phrased questions to allow analysis on which questions generate more meaningful data and do not prime specific responses.
The survey was conducted online by Kantar in August and September 2024.
We’ve outlined the full research process in our report here.
