Consumiendo responsablemente y con conciencia ambiental para la sostenibilidad de la vida. Una mirada desde la Atenas del Ecuador

Abstract

The objective of this research proposal was to analyze the influence of environmental awareness on the responsible consumption of consumers of two agroecological fairs located in Cuenca: La Red Agroecológica del Austro (RAA) and AgroAzuay, as well as to determine the attitudes, consumption factors and perception of these buyers regarding sales promotions. Fulfilling the general objective set out here required the application of quantitative (surveys) and qualitative (semi-structured interviews) methodologies. The quantitative data were collected from a sample of 474 buyers from both fairs; on the other hand, the interviews were applied to a sample of 16 consumers. The Student's t-test, Pearson's correlation and multiple regression were the techniques that made it possible to arrive at results that, among other things, indicate that environmental awareness explains 24% and 60% of the responsible consumption of AgroAzuay and RAA consumers, respectively. This difference between one market and the other is justified by the fact that RAA buyers have a more prosumer profile compared to their AgroAzuay peers. This led to the conclusion that responsible consumption finds a large part of its explanatory capacity in other variables; determining what these are and to what extent they influence is an interesting line of future research. Another relevant conclusion is that there is a need to generate more environmental awareness among agroecological consumers and that, in turn, they should gradually become prosumers