Studies and Investigation about the Attitude towards Sustainable Production, Consumption and Waste Generation in Line with Circular Economy in Romania

With a rapidly growing world population and the need to address the issue of consumption of global resource and its associated environmental impacts and other social and economic issues, the demand for a responsible consumption, production and prevention of waste generation become increasingly crucial. With this broad characterization of Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP), businesses based on circular economy should become the norm. With this goal in mind, an online questionnaire survey was performed on a nationwide scale, to explore consumers’ behaviors and attitudes. It was distributed in all four of Romania’s macro-regions and reached 642 respondents. The purpose of the study has been to better understand consumers’ behavior regarding sustainable consumption and production and examine whether generations play a role in responsible consumer attitudes toward the products. Three generations (X, Y, and Z) have been examined and compared. The results show that what extent those three generation agree with the environment and the benefits of reducing resource consumption, also waste generation, selective collection, recycling and reuse. However, most of them have not adopted and do not intend to adopt consumer patterns based on the circular economy. The findings provide empirical evidence and directions that could help marketers identify their consumer’s characteristics and market segments and develop consumer empowerment strategies on the Romanian market.