- February 13, 2015
- 4:06 pm
- Raymond Benton Jr
- no comments
Millennials are going to change the world through environmental sustainability
Making Responsible Decisions:
Millennials Are Going to Change the World —
through Environmental Sustainability.
This headline shows up on page 69 of the 11th edition of Marketing by Kerin, Hartley and Rudelius, the text we use in MARK 201. It is repeated on page 71 of the 12th edition of the text.
This is another example of the nonsense that lies between the covers of our textbooks. That is not an insult, except of the textbook authors.
That Millennials are going to change the world through environmental sustaiis is a hope or a dream only. If you have read ANY of the surveys conducted about environmental attitudes in the past several years you know it is not a reflection of reality, NET IMPACT notwithstanding. For example, the most recent National Geographic Greendex* reports that Americans’ score has decreased, very slightly they say, since the 2012 survey. But we are still ranked last overall of 18 countries surveyed.
http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/greendex/
Of course, anybody that has taken a marketing research course knows that you must know who was among those 18 countries, (by the way, it included India, China, Australia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, and Canada — among others), precisely what questions were asked of people and what they used as the source for their other data. They answer these, and other methodological questions, on their webpage.
Our textbook specifically mentions Millennials. If we dig deep into the National Geographic data we may get demographic breakdowns. I looked but couldn’t find it on this webpage. Still, if Americans, as a whole, were dead last among the 18 countries surveyed, expecting our Millennials to be somehow at the top, ready to change the world, would be expecting the bizarre. I am not criticizing our Millennials as much as I criticize our textbooks for presenting hopes and dreams, if that is what they are, as facts.
I have other reasons for doubting what our text says, too. In 1994 I did a little study of environmental knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors. I compared, in one study, how business undergraduate students compared to undergraduates in the liberal arts and sciences. In a second study I compared how business undergraduates (juniors and seniors) compared to the counterparts in Singapore. Those results were that business students knew less, cared less, and did less than did students in the liberal arts. The U.S. students also knew less, cared less, and did less that did the students in Singapore.
Still, the National Geographic report wasn’t all bad. We are among the most likely of the 18 groups surveyed to try to buy ‘used’ or pre-owned rather than brand new goods, but we are also among the most likely to prefer disposable household products rather than things we must wash and reuse.
We are the most likely of the 18 groups to own, rent, or lease two or more cars or trucks; we also report the highest frequency of driving alone and are the least likely to regularly use public transportation. We are also the least likely to frequently walk or ride a bicycle to common destinations.
If Millennials are going to change the world through environmental sustainability, they are going to need help from their business school instructors. But they, too, might need some help. In 1994, as another piece of that little research study I conducted (referred to above), faculty in our schools of business knew less, cared less and did less (environmentally speaking) than did the faculty in liberal arts and sciences. That is not an insult; it is just reporting, as Walter Cronkite would have said, “the way is was.” And probably the way it is.
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* National Geographic is not known for being a hot bed of radicalism in the United States.