Purchasing Choices that Reduce Climate Change: An Exploratory Factor Analysis

Household consumption is a primary source of green-house gas emissions. Individuals can substantially reduce their climate impact by making sustainable purchasing choices, such as choosing products that are made locally and have less packaging, buying used, repairing items rather than replacing them, supporting libraries and bike-share programs, encouraging others to buy less, and donating to charity in someone's name rather than buying gifts. The Climate Change Action Inventory measures the frequency of 77 daily behaviors, including 14 items regarding Climate-Friendly Purchasing Choices. The purpose of this research was to determine if purchasing choices could be divided into meaningful factors. We recruited 500 United States MTurk workers, aged 19 to 76 (mean 40). Both the minimum average partial test and scree test both suggested three factors, which were rotated using direct oblimin. We labeled the factors Choosing Sustainable Options, Supporting Collective Action, and Avoiding Buying New. These three factors have strong inter-correlations, suggesting that interventions to increase one type of sustainable purchasing choice might also impact other types of sustainable purchasing choices.