Left, right, or buy green? Political ideology and sustainable consumption in Europe

This research investigates the role of ideological self-placement in explaining Europe's sustainable consumption orientations based on two high-quality secondary datasets, namely, World Values Survey (WVS) Wave 7 and Special Eurobarometer 513/Eurobarometer 95.1.This analysis builds on confirmatory factor analysis and multilevel modeling to distinguish between moral willingness to bear private environmental costs and reported climate-relevant consumer practices.Within the WVS, we formulate a latent orientation founded on the environment-growth trade-off, as well as readiness to incur higher taxes or sacrifice income for pollution abatement; within Eurobarometer, we summarise climate-relevant household and purchase behaviours through a Green Consumer Action Index.The results show a steady ideological gradient: respondents placing further to the right report declining willingness to incur private economic costs to help the environment.The relationship remains significant after controlling for socioeconomic status and religiosity, and is partially attenuated with the control for environmental concern.Evidence from Eurobarometer corroborates this pattern by illustrating substantial uptake of cheap, low-effort actions such as recycling and reducing disposables, but much weaker uptake of expensive actions like solar panels, low-energy homes and electric cars.Cross-dataset triangulation thus indicates that ideology influences moral preference whereas institutions, infrastructure, and affordability constrain behavioral feasibility.The results highlight the importance of fair, cost-reducing climate policies that can transform willingness to act in favour of the environment into durable consumer behaviours.