Although prior studies on sustainable services have examined the issue in contexts such as health care and fashion, existing theories often focus on isolated drivers and therefore offer limited insight into sustained engagement with mobile services for essential daily consumption. Moreover, cross-cultural evidence remains fragmented. Addressing these gaps, this study aims to apply the social influence, habit formation, individual self, feelings and cognition and tangibility (SHIFT) framework to develop a sustainable service engagement model for mobile technology-enabled sustainable services targeted at food waste reduction and water conservation. It also examines the cultural differences in the SHIFT-engagement-intention mechanism between collectivist and individualist consumers.
This study examined how sustainable mobile technologies for food waste reduction and water conservation influence the use behaviours of individualist (USA, n = 500) and collectivist (Taiwan, n = 327) consumers.
The dimensions of social influence (subjective norms and group identification), the individual self (symbolic benefits) and feelings and cognition (anticipated positive and negative emotions and informativeness) are effective drivers of service engagement and subsequent sustainable behavioural intention. The cross-cultural analysis uncovered stronger relationships between future orientation and service engagement and between engagement and behavioural intention in Taiwan than in the USA.
This study extended the application of the SHIFT framework to mobile sustainability services and provided culturally informed insights into cultivating effective sustainable consumption behaviours.
