Consumer Barriers to Healthy and Sustainable Living in 2023

Recent consumer research from GlobeScan indicates that the perceived high cost is holding back large proportions of consumers from making the changes needed to live a healthy and sustainable lifestyle (50% of consumers globally in 2023, up from 47% in 2021). Specifically, consumers in Europe, North America, and Latin America increasingly cite the lack of affordability as the main barrier they face.

In the context of a continued global cost-of-living crisis, these results show that the next frontier for healthy and sustainable living is democratizing the affordability of better products and services. This is an issue for both governments and brands to solve: consumers also point to their lack of support as a top barrier to healthy and sustainable living today.

Read more in our report Consumers Will Not Save the World: Why Now Is the Time for a Reset.

Survey Question: What is preventing you from living in a way that is good for you, good for other people, and good for the environment? Please select three things from the following list in order of importance, with 1 being the most important, 2 the second most important, and 3 the third most important.

Data in the chart include Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Egypt, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Peru, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Thailand, Turkey, UK, USA, and Vietnam.

Source: GlobeScan Healthy & Sustainable Living Report (survey of 29,565 people in the general public in July ‒ August 2023)​