Impact of a media campaign on consumers' purchasing intentions of legal timber in Cameroon

Illegal logging is a key driver of deforestation in tropical countries and benefits a large number of stakeholders, including urban domestic buyers. Changing the latter's purchasing behavior could produce significant shifts in the illegal trade market. Based on survey data (n= 463), this paper assesses the impact of a media campaign on consumers' purchase intentions for legal timber and wooden furniture in Yaoundé and analyses the underlying psychological mechanisms. Combining covariate matching and mediation analysis, we found a significant positive effect of the media campaign on the declared intention to purchase legally-sourced timber and the mediation effect of two out of three precursors of the theory of planned behaviors, namely attitude and subjective norms. This study provides critical inputs to frame future media campaign messages and, by demonstrating some consumers' interest in legal timber, to strengthen the domestic legitimacy of policies such as the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade

A Systematic Review of the Scope and Patterns of Green Consumption in Sub-Saharan Africa

Despite the importance of “green consumption”, it has received little attention in sub-Saharan Africa. To address this gap, a systematic review of the scientific literature was conducted on the patterns of green consumption in this region using three parameters: green consumption, behaviour, and location. Forty-eight articles and publications were identified between 2010 and 2021 on Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar and grey literature. Scientific literature on green consumption in sub-Saharan Africa has expanded over the last five years, but it focuses primarily on emerging countries (Republic of South Africa and Nigeria) and the upper social classes. Most articles used the theory of planned behaviour as a theoretical framework. Green consumption of food and agricultural products are the most studied, with 14 articles. Energy, cosmetics, tourism, and textiles are each the subject of three specific publications. The emergence of middle-class consumers in sub-Saharan Africa is likely to contribute to the expansion of green consumption for a broad spectrum of goods and services