This systematic review synthesizes 30 years of research on whether consumers are willing to reward firms for their positive sustainability actions either by changing their behaviour or by paying a premium. The review was conducted from November 2008 to March 2009 at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario, under a grant from the Network for Business Sustainability.

From a broad search of 1700 academic and practitioner articles, we selected 91 articles, based on a variety of quality and relevance criteria, to summarize the knowledge in this area.

• Will consumers pay a premium? If so, how much? How do they behave when faced with trade-offs?
• What social and environmental attributes are most considered in purchase decisions?
• Are there differences across geographies, industries, products and brands?
• How can managers close the attitude-intention- behaviour gap with consumers?
• What should future researchers of socially conscious consumerism know?