Supporting Purposeful Consumer Behaviors for a More Sustainable Future
Consumers around the world want to make the right choices for the planet and their families, but sustainable living today can look daunting. It can be expensive, inconvenient, time-consuming and complex. In a recent study on Sustainable Commerce conducted in partnership with Emirates Nature-WWF in the UAE, 63% of consumers surveyed view sustainability as a leading societal challenge, and 66% believe they can contribute to decarbonization. However, perceived higher costs and lack of awareness are barriers for 65% and 54% of respondents respectively.
So how do we make sustainable living more rewarding, attainable, and appealing? How do we inspire positive action and help consumers make lifestyle and behavioral changes that lead us toward a sustainable, net-zero future? Of course, these efforts to support purposeful consumerism are part of a broader movement, taking place alongside the major actions governments and the private sector need to make.
As government, business, and civil society leaders gather this week for the 2023 UN Climate Change Conference (COP28), the world's eyes are on this important convening and its efforts to accelerate climate mitigation and adaptation. Visa is attending COP28 to continue to build awareness around how digital payments can play a part in this vital effort.
As a company, we recognize the need for sustained climate action and believe digital payments can help advance progress toward a net-zero economy. At Visa, three things are key to driving sustainable consumer behaviors and choices.
Building awareness
First, we want to help consumers better understand the connections between their daily living and the impact of their purchases. According to Visa research, a high percentage of consumers would be more likely to make more environmentally friendly purchases if they could see their carbon footprint at the purchase level. Through our partnership with Ecolytiq, consumers can see estimated carbon emissions based on their transactions as well as education and tips about how to shift behaviors to reduce emissions right in some banking apps. In the UAE, we have partnered with Mashreq bank and ecolytiq to launch Visa Eco Benefits. This innovative service integrates eco-friendly features into card payments, allowing users to track their environmental impact.
Travel and tourism are major contributors to greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental challenges. But as the Visa Economic Empowerment Institute shared in a newly published white paper, they are also vital economic enablers for many countries and local communities. Visa and a group of major online travel agencies came together to co-found Travalyst, a global sustainable travel initiative to present consumers with more consistent and visible sustainability information, starting with accommodations and aviation. Through Travalyst, we are sourcing reliable sustainability data, everything from a hotel’s individual practices to route-based carbon emissions calculations for flights, to display credible, easy-to-understand information for customers of online booking sites.
Removing friction
Second, we’re working to remove friction from sustainable behaviors. For example, increasing urbanization puts pressure on cities to expand and accelerate public transit use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. An estimated 56 percent of people worldwide live in cities—a number that is expected to grow to 68 percent by 20501. But riders still face friction, with some using as many as four different payment methods a month for their travel2.
Our Urban Mobility team is working on more than 700 projects worldwide to help create an efficient, inclusive, and sustainable door-to-door journey. Tap to pay and tap to ride technology can help make life fast, easy and secure for commuters, and they have helped increase ridership by 10 percent while improving efficiency and rider satisfaction.
We have also been working with many players in the electric vehicle ecosystem to address friction associated with EV charging, including bringing open loop acceptance to public paid charging points and working with EMVco coalition to bring payments standardization to the charging experience. All of this together helps make the sustainable transit choice easier.
Making it the obvious choice
That brings us to our third approach, which is making sustainability the obvious choice. We need a global sustainable movement that actually works—that isn’t mired in the things that feel out of our control but is focused on the things we can control.
We created the Visa Behavioral Insights Lab to help identify and test behavioral nudges for consumer adoption and scaling solutions. For example, we’re testing projects that would help a beverage company get more people to choose reusable cups; a fashion company to encourage shoppers to buy resale; or a repair shop to market to consumers that repairing garments is better than throwing them away.
Our experiments will be open sourced with downloadable playbooks for any business to develop their own circular models and become part of the wider recommerce community.
Looking ahead
Ultimately, we need to give people as many ways to actively participate as possible—and help them want to participate. We need to help engage consumers toward a net zero future that uplifts lives and the planet. We do that by meeting consumers where they are, removing friction, and working together in a way that makes it easy to live sustainably. We also aspire to continue developing new payment and money movement solutions and partnerships that address the needs of consumers, businesses, banks, and communities in the challenging context of a world confronting climate change.
Learn more about how Visa is helping to protect the planet through payments.
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1- United Nations World Cities Report 2022 https://unhabitat.org/wcr/
2- https://usa.visa.com/visa-everywhere/blog/bdp/2023/08/14/how-to-fill-1692034631743.html
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