Socio-demographics, implicit attitudes, explicit attitudes, and sustainable consumption in supermarket shopping

• This research studies sustainable consumption using supermarket data.
• Implicit and explicit attitudes and demographics are used as drivers of behaviour.
• Implicit Association Test (IAT) and Likert scales gauge attitudes.
• Education influence behaviour directly and indirectly by raising concerns.
• Attitudes influence demand differently in different food categories.

The aim of this research is to examine whether socio-demographics, implicit and explicit attitudes towards the environment predict sustainable consumer behaviour, measured using supermarket loyalty card data. The article uses an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and Likert scales to gauge implicit and explicit attitudes towards sustainable consumption in a real consumer sample, and measures demographic characteristics of participants. Results indicate that level of education is a key predictor of an aggregate measure of sustainable consumption, with a small part of this influence mediated by level of explicit environmental concern for climate change. Econometric modelling shows that explicit and implicit attitudes influence consumer decisions differently in specific food categories. Results, obtained with real consumer data, call into question the accepted socio-demographic profile of the green consumer and help identify conditions under which pro-environmental attitudes predict sustainable consumption.