Five shades of green: Uncovering consumption profile heterogeneity and the role of socioeconomic status in the Netherlands

Consumer behaviour significantly contributes to environmental degradation, highlighting the need to understand consumption patterns to inform sustainable policies. Despite growing interest, there is still a lack of nuanced understanding of consumption. First, most studies examined how factors like socioeconomic status (SES) influence isolated consumption behaviours, overlooking the cumulative, cross-domain influence of consumption. Second, while SES is a well-acknowledged and studied predictor of consumption, less is known whether the effects of SES components (income, education) differ and whether they interact. To overcome these gaps, we used microdata from Statistics Netherlands and grouped households based on their fashion, food, transportation, water, and energy expenditures via Latent Profile Analysis. Five subgroups are identified: Low consumers, high consumers, nomadic compensators, local-based foodies, and average consumers . Higher-educated households are more likely to be “nomadic compensators” and “average consumers” and less likely to be “local-based foodies”. Higher-income households are less likely to be “local-based foodies”. For other profiles, income and education effects are interdependent. Lower-income or lower-educated households are more likely to be “low consumers”, whereas higher-income or higher-educated households are more likely to be “high consumers”. Among households with lower education levels, higher income increases the probability of belonging to “high consumers”, while lower income increases the probability of belonging to “low consumers”. However, at high-income levels, these differences disappear. Our findings highlight the importance of a person-centered framework in understanding consumption.