Green purchasing: the effect of parenthood and gender

Abstract The extant literature has inquired the effect of several socio-economic individual characteristics on green purchasing, showing that education, social status and other individual characteristics may enhance virtuous behaviours, but has paid few attention to parenthood and to the presence of children. Theoretical models of microeconomic choices show that if the parents’ utility includes that of children, then their presence should affect parents’ green purchases. Indeed, parents should desire a sustainable world for their children to have access to enough resources. Using data from 61 countries, this paper inquires whether parenthood and the number of children affect people’s decisions about green consumption; in addition the presence of a gender effect (i.e. mothers being more prone to green choices than fathers) exists. The empirical evidence shows that having children decreases the probability of buying green products; an increasing number of children have the same effect. However, parenthood and number of children have opposite effects on fathers and on mothers. Policymakers and marketing divisions of firms may benefit from this empirical evidence. In addition, analyses are performed on homogeneous clusters of countries to account for possible differences due to different environmental engagement or level of economic development. The results show that, while the gender effect is persistent, that of parenting and the number of children is not statistically significant in affluent countries. This last result suggests that budget constraints are a major factor affecting green purchases.