A wholeSEM paper from Ecological Economics has been cited in an article on the Mail Online.

Questioning demand: A study of regretted purchases in Great Britain by Alexandra Skelton and Julian Allwood, University of Cambridge presents findings from a nationally representative household survey on the tendency to regret purchases across 20 product groups.

Key findings included:

• Buying goods we regret costs us up to £25bn a year.
• The vast majority of British adults have regretted purchasing in the past.
• Regret is shown to be particularly prevalent for clothing & footwear and takeaway food.
• Wasteful purchases costs each household an average of up to £1,040 a year.

These findings are interesting because they suggest that there is a degree of self-assessed over-consumption that, if reduced, could help to reduce pressures on the environment.

Read the paper

Read the article

Further Information