Income and its relationship with conscious consumption: a study with young university students in Rio

The present study identifies ideas, perceptions, attitudes and opinions of young university students residing in the city of Rio de Janeiro, concerning their sustainable consumption practices. In order to achieve this goal, a quantitative exploratory research model was used with a structured questionnaire derived from thescale developed by Antil and Bennett (1979), composed of 40 statements, covering ideas, beliefs and attitudes related to socially responsible consumption. The data was treated by means of descriptive statistics in order to evaluate the respondents’ profile, and then statistical inference was used to evaluate the results, raising hypotheses about the influence of the variable income on the statements that made up the scale. The tests used were Chi-square, F-test (ANOVA) and Duncan test. Thus, it was possible to verify the few statements depending on the income variable, i.e. young people’s conscious consumption decision, often, does not depend on the socio-demographicmedian household income variable.