COVID Resurgence Dents Eco-Shopping Habits in China

The topic of sustainability has continued to grow in importance of the last few years, especially in the last 12 months with the impact of climate change affecting people’s everyday lives in many areas of the world. From flooding in Pakistan and the US to wildfires in Spain and Portugal, the summer of 2022 saw one climate-related disaster after another.

However, has the recent resurgence of Covid in China impacted shopper’s attitudes and purchasing behaviours towards sustainability? To answer this question, we will take a look at the results from the latest ‘Who Cares, Who Does?’ (WCWD) survey that has been conducted by Kantar Worldpanel every year since 2019 amongst 3,000 Chinese households.

In 2021 we saw that the group of shoppers who were most concerned with the environment and actively change their behaviour (‘The Green Advocates’) had grown in size and represented 30% of the population. In 2022 this group has decreased in size and now accounts for 26% of the population, a decrease of 6.1m households.

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