A Profile of Romanian Highly Educated Eco-Consumers Interested in Product Recycling A Statistical Approach

The objective of this research is to create a profile of the Romanian eco-consumer with university education. The profile is not limited to the information regarding environmental and economic benefits of recycling, but focuses on ecological behaviour. A detailed statistical analysis was made based on a large representative sample of respondents with secondary and university education. Indeed, the tendency of practical ecobehaviour becomes more pronounced for the people with university education. For people that are more than 30 years old the chance of being aware of the significance of the recycling symbols on the packages decreases, the lowest chance being given to people aged more than 50. The respondents that are interested in environment protection buy products with ecological symbols. However, those people who already know the meaning of these symbols do not buy this type of products for ecological reasons, even if they are interested in the environment protection. This research also offers an extensive description of its results, being an opportunity for the respondents to know more about the meaning of the recycling symbols. The results of this research also provide information being a guideline for consumers. This study achieves two main goals: the ecological component (the eco-consumers were identified and ordinary consumers were attracted through the ecological behaviour) and the economic aspect (the resources allocation will be more efficient and the marketers will be able to address ecoconsumers who have specific characteristics).