All of us would like to live a more sustainable life. But somehow it doesn’t happen, because it’s too expensive, too much effort or the options don’t exist.
As a result, despite all the messages from governments, society and brands, the gap between what we say and what we do appears as unbridgeable as ever. According to Kantar’s 2025 Sustainability Sector Index, 85% of people want to make more sustainable choices but only 29% of people are actively changing their behaviour.
That means they are buying products or services that don’t match what they think is important, creating a persistent value-action gap that needs to be solved for brands to drive sustainable growth.
But these gaps are also an opportunity. People’s growing desire to embrace sustainability means that on average 73% have tried or are open to try brands that have a more positive environmental or social impact. Conversely, The Sustainability Sector Index also tells us that across categories, on average, half (54%) say they have rejected brands because of their negative environmental or social impact.
Brands need to play their part because increased success for sustainable products and services are an important part of humanity’s future. When it comes to climate change, for example, Project Drawdown highlights the power of behaviour change in helping society reach Net Zero: “Individual and household actions have the potential to produce 25-30% of the total emissions reductions needed.”
A new paradigm for closing the gap
By diving into what respondents claim to hold true as their values and comparing it to their actions, brands can more easily determine where consumers find frictions. They can then provide solutions that facilitate an easier transition, not only closing the value-action gap for consumers but also for businesses as the lack of accessible sustainable products is a key friction for many.
Research based around these frictions has enabled us to identify seven groups of people, adding greater granularity to previous population breakdowns, and giving us a more accurate look at how brands can play their part in facilitating change and create messages that resonate with more people.
From the Changemakers to the Dismissive, each group has a very different attitude to sustainability, but each can be persuaded to adopt sustainable behaviours, where the motivation provided by brands – which can be completely unrelated to sustainability – connects or solves current frictions.
Let’s take the Changemakers for example, they are the most hopeful that we can find climate solutions (“74% vs 57% average”). Obsessive in their quest for better ways of living, they have a huge influence on those around them, clearly communicating their values. Uniquely they also understand the connection between environmental and social challenges. A level below them are the Committed, those that believe they can personally make a difference (“90% vs 75% average”).
But perhaps it’s in the other groups that the most adjustment needs to be made by brands. These are the groups where it’s not enough to simply stick a better-for-planet label on your new variant to drive sales.
The Strivers, for example, are willing to pay more for sustainable products (64% vs. 52% average) but struggle to change their behaviour because it can be hard to find accessible solutions. They need help from brands in the shape of easier to switch products to change.
Least engaged in sustainability issues are the Dismissive, people who don’t really think about the issue (61% vs 26% average). Even in this group, however, we can find examples of sustainable behaviours such as owning an electric car or vegan diets. What’s driving these behaviours is not sustainability but convenience and health, respectively.
The brands that are succeeding
Changemakers are a useful “early adopter” audience for Activist or Change Brands such as Patagonia. They support normalising and socialising sustainable behaviours but others such as Tony's Chocolonely, with its call for collective action to eradicate slavery from cocoa farming, also tick all their boxes.
The Committed are another useful “early adopter” audience and refillable brand Wild ticks boxes with such consumers because it shows them how they can reduce packaging waste.
The best way to approach the Strivers, is to suggest small, foot-in-the-door behaviour changes. They do want to change but they need it to seem easy. One brand meeting that need is Who Gives a Crap, the toilet paper that makes it easy to buy a loo roll that doesn't require trees to be cut down.
By contrast, the key frictions for the Pragmatists are financial and accessibility. Brand messages need to dial up the benefits and emphasise the long-term cost benefits of more sustainable solutions such as refills. For them, cleaning brand Smol, which navigates the initial expense of buying refill bottles via free trials and gifts, while also celebrating the long-term rewards, is a brand that’s getting it right.
To understand more about the frictions that drive consumer behaviour and how to overcome them for each of our seven groups please view Bridging the gap: Overcoming the value-action gap for different groups of people here.
Talk to our expert, Mark Fisher, Senior Partner at Kantar’s Sustainable Transformation Practice at mark.fisher@kantar.com or book a meeting here.