The LOHAS lifestyle and marketplace behavior: Establishing valid and reliable measurements

Abstract

Increasing interest in sustainable consumption/development suggests the need to define sustainable lifestyles. People have become concerned about personal and environmental health, social ethics, and morality, and they have incorporated these values into their daily practices. LOHAS (Lifestyle of Health and Sustainability) is an empirically defined lifestyle that reflects this shift. Saying that LOHAS exists does not make it "real" or important to research areas or useful to marketing. Although the LOHAS lifestyle defines a life in pursuit of balance between the individual, the environment, and the society, there is very little work empirically validating its measurement or its relationship to actual behaviors. This chapter will provide an overview of the extant research on the LOHAS lifestyle.We will discuss the market place behaviors of the LOHAS consumer and our development of a reliable and valid measurement tool for LOHAS.