Three key
takeaways

We all know that there’s an urgent need to support people to adopt and stick with more sustainable behaviours. To do that we need to understand them and the barriers or deeper frictions they face better.

Our research has delivered three key insights:

1. Smarter questioning is needed

We need to segment based on different attitudes and values regarding sustainability that split people apart. By experimenting with a broader selection of question types across both environmental and social sustainability topic areas, we’ve found more effective differentiators.

2. Recognise the barriers people face

We need to ask better questions to find out what really happens. We’ve identified a meaningful and scalable approach to asking people about their sustainability behaviours, which are often over-stated. By asking questions in the context of barriers to not assume positive action, as well as testing an approach to prime respondents to be honest in their responses, we’ll get closer to the real picture.

3. We need more granularity

We need a foundation to build more detailed consumer segments. It is no longer adequate to identify very high-level groupings of people – those who believe and act on sustainability, those who are on the fence, through to those who do not. Based on this research we can now pull people apart more clearly and accurately focused on behaviour change. We’ll be sharing our new segments in 2025.