Global Impact, Local Action: Understanding Consumer Responses to Sustainability in a Globalized World

As global challenges intensify consumer anxiety and reshape purchasing decisions worldwide, consumers are increasingly choosing sustainable options. Yet much of the existing research on sustainable consumption has been conducted within domestic contexts, leaving a notable gap in understanding how consumer attitudes and behaviors toward sustainability are shaped across diverse markets and cultures.

The global marketplace presents a complex frontier for sustainable consumption. Consumer values, identities, regulations, and institutions vary greatly across countries and cultures—a product message deemed environmentally responsible in one country might be viewed as irrelevant or even wasteful in another. Without addressing these cross-national and cross-cultural differences, our understanding of sustainable consumption remains incomplete.

This special issue invites studies that explore the multifaceted nature of the global sustainable consumer from two complementary angles: (1) applying established international marketing concepts to the sustainability domain and (2) extending sustainable consumption theories to the international context.

The guest editors welcome conceptual, review, and empirical papers that are methodologically rigorous, including qualitative studies, quantitative analyses, and multi-method designs.