Role of Religion in Sustainable Consumption

Dear Colleagues, 

Sustainability is a growing concern worldwide. The United Nations indicated its importance through the launch of a sustainable development agenda that was agreed upon by 193 different countries (Kwatra & Boelt, 2015). This agenda states a goal to “protect the planet from degredation, including through sustainable consumption and production, sustainability managing its natural resources and taking urgent action on climate change” (p. 2). While much reserach has examined sustainable consumption, one key component that prior research has failed to recognize is religion. With over 80% of consumers worldwide adhereing to some sort of religious belief (PEW, 2017), it seems critical to understand how this core value system influences sustainable consumption and may provide insight to promoting environmental preservation. 

One of the first discussions on religion’s influence on sustainability came from White’s (1967) thesis that Christians should be less sustainable than non-Christians due to dominion passages in Christian religious text. It was not until the 2000’s that research started examining religion’s influence on sustainable consumption more in depth, particularly by expanding beyond exploring religious affiliation from a purely dominion perspective. Numerous gaps still exist in the literature and need to be addressed in an effort to help our planet. As such, this Special Issue seeks papers that explore these gaps in areas such as (but not limited to) the following:

• Comparison studies among different religious affiilations and different countries on sustainable consumption, particularly in exploring minority vs. majority religion effects;
• Identifying how consumers reconcile conflicts between religious and cultural messages regarding sustainability that drive consumption decisions;
• Exploration of how different dimensions of religiosity (e.g., intrinsic, extrinsic, affective, behavioral, cognitive, quest, and fundamentalism) differentially influence sustainable consumption;
• Comparison of dominion and stewardship perspectives among religious consumers and how these are changing over time;
• New topics in religion’s influence on sustainable consumption beyond just recycling and purchasing eco-friendly products, such as practices to reduce food waste, the reuse and repurposing of products, bringing one’s own takeout container to a restaurant for leftovers, and consumers educating other consumers about sustainability;
• Dissonance produced during the covid pandemic for consumers with different religiosity levels regarding sustainability and concern for sanitation and how this dissonance can be reduced;
• Appropriate marketing communications to encourage sustainable consumption that targets religious consumers but does not offend non-religious consumers;
• Different messaging tactics for different platforms (e.g., social media vs. billboards vs. in school systems vs. in churches vs. paper mailers);
• Negative effects when religious values and/or sustainability values are taken to the extreme (e.g., reducing food consumption to be more sustainable leading to an eating disorder);
• Best practices for marketers of sustainable products or services to target both religious and non-religious consumers at the same time. 

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Religion
• Religiosity
• sustainable consumption
• dominion vs. stewardship perspectives
• core values
• reconciling values conflict
• Environmentally-friendly marketing
• Beliefs-based target markets
• Religious affiliation
• Religious vs. cultural values