New year as a moment of change in pro-environmental product consumption: evaluating the habit discontinuity and self-activation hypotheses using a large UK retail dataset

Haggar, P. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8753-1848, Sachdev, Y., Whitmarsh, L., Goulding, J., Smith, A. and Smith, G. 2025. New year as a moment of change in pro-environmental product consumption: evaluating the habit discontinuity and self-activation hypotheses using a large UK retail dataset. Frontiers in Psychology 16 , 1550091. 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1550091

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Abstract

Introduction: The New Year, and the New Year’s Resolution tradition, may establish January as a moment of personal change: when there could be a temporal landmark for making a “fresh start,” a habit discontinuity, and value activation. As such, January may afford opportunities for personal pro-environmental lifestyle changes, such as by changing product choices. Method: To investigate this empirically, we analyzed existing data from a 2016 survey of retail customers (N = 12,968) linked to 35 months of their sales data (2012–2015) provided by a leading healthcare retailer in the United Kingdom. We compared sales in January to those in other months, focusing on sales of green product varieties and overall product sales (as a dematerialization indicator), and sales of two self-enhancing health product types (nicotine replacement therapy products and weight reduction products) for comparison. Results: Our results confirmed that sales of self-enhancing health products were greater in January than in other months, but we found limited evidence for pro-environmental consumption in January, and no evidence to support the habit discontinuity or value activation hypotheses. Discussion: We discuss these results with respect to behavior change intervention potential and moments of change theory.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Published Online
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Geography and Planning (GEOPL)
Publisher:	Frontiers Media
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	1 May 2025
Date of Acceptance:	3 April 2025
Last Modified:	13 May 2025 11:10
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/178016

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