Development of a sustainable consumption measurement scale

Sustainable consumption has been recognized since the 1990s; however, advances in the studies have been modest and have not yielded significant breakthroughs. The urgent need to adopt sustainable consumption has been emphasized by consumers, practitioners, and researchers, but despite efforts by social and government agencies, progress in relation to adoption remains insufficient. The multivariate nature of sustainable consumption is one reason for this insufficient progress. Previously developed literature-based instruments have been univariate or limited in their dimensions and inadequate for measuring the phenomena they purport to measure. Hence, in this study, we develop a measurement scale to address this gap. The scale encompasses dimensions relevant to contemporary society and is informed by prior research and primary data. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with sustainability specialists, a nominal group technique with engaged consumers, a survey of 255 students, and a survey of 808 consumers from diverse regions of Brazil, all resulting in a heterogeneous sample. The final data analysis included an exploratory factor analysis and a confirmatory factor analysis, which resulted in a final model that comprised eight dimensions: activism, personal sacrifice, communitarianism, environmental concern, healthy food, perceived consumer effectiveness, search for information, and social concern. Of these dimensions, personal sacrifice, environmental concern, and social concern are the archetypes of the present generation. The variables of these dimensions have not been accounted for in previous scales, making our new scale more comprehensive and contributing to a better understanding of sustainable consumption. This new comprehensive scale will aid future studies in sustainable consumption, contributing to a better understanding of this construct. We expect that this scale will help improve the monitoring of the progress made in sustainable behavior and the assessment of management practices of sustainable consumption. Future studies should be carried out to validate the dimensions in different cultural contexts.     

Public overspending in higher education

We study the trade-off between governmental investments in pretertiary and tertiary education from an efficiency point of view. We develop a model comprising agents with different incomes and abilities, public and private schools, and public universities that select applicants based on an admission exam. Reallocating governmental resources from tertiary to pretertiary education may positively affect aggregate production and human capital if some conditions are satisfied. For instance, in an economy with a high proportion of credit-constrained students, a reallocation of expenditure toward public schools benefits many students, compensating for the negative effect of a decrease in public university investments. We also quantitatively investigate the optimal allocation of public investment between pretertiary and tertiary education, and we find that a 10% increase in productivity of public investments in pretertiary education could increase the optimal GDP between 2.1% and 3%.