How “Green Knowledge” Influences Sustainability through Behavior Change: Theory and Policy Implications

The urgent and critical challenges of transforming patterns of behavior from current unsustainable ones are encapsulated in the 2015 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Central to these goals and targets are systems of sustainable consumption and production. This crucial goal depends on consumers and producers making choices that depend on knowledge available to them and on other factors influencing their preferences in accordance with norms and culture. This paper investigates how “green knowledge” (i.e., knowledge of ecologically and socially sound products and practices) influences sustainability in the intersections of knowledge, preferences, behavior, and economic and environmental performance. By employing a general equilibrium economic model, we show that consumers, producers, and industry regulators with different degrees of knowledge and concern about the health and environmental benefits of products and production would lead to different economic and environmental consequences. As “green knowledge” influences consumption patterns and government policy-making, our model shows that, in principle, there will be a shift in the content of the economy to that which supports the achievement of long-term sustainability.