sustainability Article Inclusion of Life Cycle Thinking in a Sustainability-Oriented Consumer’s Typology: A Proposed Methodology and an Assessment Tool Anna Lewandowska 1,*, Joanna Witczak 1, Pasquale Giungato 2 ID , Christian Dierks 3, Przemyslaw Kurczewski 4 and Katarzyna Pawlak-Lemanska 1 1 Faculty of Commodity Science, Poznan University of Economics and Business, 61-875 Poznan, Poland;
[email protected] (J.W.);
[email protected] (K.P.-L.) 2 Chemistry Department, University of Bari Aldo Moro, Taranto district-via Alcide de Gasperi, 74123 Taranto, Italy;
[email protected] 3 Fraunhofer Project Group Materials Recycling and Resource Strategies, Brentanostrasse 2a, 63755 Alzenau, Germany;
[email protected] 4 Faculty of Machines and Transportation, Poznan University of Technology, Piotrowo 3, 60-965 Poznan, Poland;
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[email protected]; Tel.: +48-61-854-3121 Received: 8 April 2018; Accepted: 29 May 2018; Published: 1 June 2018 Abstract: Characterizing consumers in terms of their propensity to practice sustainable consumption represents an interesting research challenge in which a crucial role is played by the questionnaire in terms of its structure and classification criteria. Various classification rules have been proposed in the literature, which can be used to identify consumer types and signify their propensity to practice the principles of sustainable development in daily life. In this paper, we based our approach in designing a classification tool on a combination of two elements: the concept of voluntary simplicity as a pillar for consumer characteristics and the idea of assessing consumers by using filters, in a modified form introducing many new aspects of life-cycle thinking.