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.
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.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 1550091 |
| Journal | Frontiers in Psychology: Environmental Psychology |
| Volume | 16 |
| Early online date | 23 Apr 2025 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 23 Apr 2025 |
Data Availability Statement
The dataset presented in this article is proprietary and not readily available. Requests to access these datasets should be directed to James Goulding, [email protected].Funding
The author(s) declare that financial support was received for the research and/or publication of this article. This work was supported by the European Research Council as part of the MOCHA project [grant number 820235].
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| European Research Council | 820235 |
Keywords
- fresh-start effect
- habit discontinuity
- pro-environmental consumption
- temporal landmarks
- value activation
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- General Psychology
