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Consumption and the Environment in Europe

4 Understanding Cultures of Consumption

Chapter 3 described some of the dynamics that help to shape the economic and physical infrastructure in which consumption takes place, the supply of consumer goods and services, and consumers' financial resources with which to buy them. But perhaps the hardest challenge in considering the future of consumption is to produce an adequate description of the psychological, social and cultural processes shaping consumer tastes, preferences and behaviour.

Policy analysis, grounded in the economic theory of utility, often views consumption as the principal way in which people achieve individual and collective well-being. Consumers are assumed to act rationally in the market according to their personal preferences, to maximise their own satisfaction or utility.

The economic approach is certainly useful for tackling some policy questions, but avoids the question of how preferences arise. The policies recommended by economic analysts do not seek to shape preferences, but to satisfy them (including social and environmental preferences). The central policy goal is to maximise the consumer utility function deduced from consumer behaviour (which is assumed to indicate consumer preferences). This approach leads to policies that support consumption of more of the same.

Research by psychologists, sociologists and economists into satisfaction and well-being calls the mainstream assumptions into question. Firstly, consumers do not behave according to the economic concept of rational optimisation (Dietz and Stern, 1995; Jaeger et al, 1998). Even when making considered choices, we are only able to consider a small number of variables, leading to behaviour better described as “satisficing”. Much of our behaviour is habitual. Choices are often better understood as a process of internal debate among alternative scripts, rather than an internal optimising algorithm. Hence, we are guided by the scripts available to us – to a large extent supplied by the people around us and through the media (Dennet, 1993; Dickinson, 1998).

Secondly, we do not necessarily use these decision processes to choose behaviours or options that will increase our personal satisfaction. Although we do appear to be strongly motivated to pursue wealth, Argyle (1987) and Inglehart (1996) find that increasing income and consumption is correlated with satisfaction only up to a point. As discussed in Chapter 3, public surveys from a number of countries show that, once national average income exceeds about US$10,000 (€8,000), further GDP growth does not appear to make people happier. Argyle finds that some of the most important determinants of happiness are health, family relationships, friendships and having meaningful work. Those with a high relative income are more satisfied than those with a low relative income, but the absolute level of income is unimportant provided basic needs are met and individuals are able to function normally in society.

Figure 4.1. Supply-chain view of processes to meet human needs

Figure 4.2. Alternative view of the link between the production/consumption system and meeting human needs

One of the challenges in thinking about consumption is getting away from the understanding that tends to dominate economic and government thinking. Figure 4.1 illustrates a supply-chain view of consumption and its environmental and resource impacts. According to this perspective, human needs are met by consumption. Consumption depends on the production and supply of goods and services. There are impacts on the environment throughout the supply chain including the production, use and disposal phases. The challenge for sustainability is then to maximise consumption while minimising the environmental impacts.

This is not the only way of thinking about the various activities that surround production and consumption. Figure 4.2 turns the supply chain conception of human needs around. In fact, all of the phases of supply, use and disposal contribute directly to meeting human needs. The activities are likely to be shaped by the needs of those who carry them out, and those who are affected directly and indirectly by them. Including this alternative perspective suggests that we may need to think in much more complex ways about the many goals that need to be addressed in the search for sustainability.

4.1 Individual motivation, habit and need

The human motivation to consume is often described in the language of needs, wants and desires. However, “need” is an elusive concept unless it is clearly linked to a particular objective. While some needs are founded entirely in individual physiology, many of our needs result from interaction with our social context: we need a basic level of nutrition for physiological survival; we need socially appropriate clothing to walk the streets without shame. Thus Maslow (1954) distinguished basic physiological and safety needs from needs for belongingness, esteem and self-actualisation. He initially proposed that needs formed a hierarchy, so that belongingness would only become important for people who had already satisfied their physiological needs. But it is easy to find counter-examples, such as people who have starved to death rather than lose their self-esteem (Douglas et al, 1998). Maslow later reconsidered the idea of the hierarchy but his categories of needs remain useful.

Other writers have developed a variety of theories of human need (e.g. Max-Neef, 1991; Doyal and Gough, 1991). Max-Neef, in particular, distinguishes “needs” from “satisfiers”. Many types of satisfier may be able to meet any given need – e.g. different types of food to provide basic nutrition. We may sometimes choose false satisfiers – e.g. eating to remediate a feeling of emptiness associated with a lack of direction or a weak sense of personal identity. False satisfiers are often habit-forming and some, such as certain drugs, are harmful.

Our perceived consumption needs are almost always socially contingent; appropriate satisfiers depend on the social context. We can understand some needs in terms of the capabilities required to function satisfactorily in society and hence to flourish (Sen, 1993). Satisfiers may include appropriate clothing, mobility, education and much else. Nussbaum interprets capabilities as freedoms, and hence links them to the more political concept of rights (Nussbaum, 1998). Perhaps we can agree on some basic and universal human needs (Doyal and Gough, 1991), but it might be more transparent to call these rights.

4.2 Consumption as a collective phenomenon

Even where the social contingency of consumption is acknowledged (e.g. OECD, 2002; Røpke, 1999; Jackson and Michaelis, 2003), culture and social structure are usually understood primarily as influences on individual choice. While this focus on the individual is a useful and valid perspective, it is not the only one (Jaeger et al, 1998). Individual behaviour can also be understood as a phenomenon of the group. Practices may emerge in a community or society without any individual ever making a conscious choice. In any case, there is considerable evidence that our sense of individual agency is at best transitory, and in many circumstances illusory (Dennet, 1993).

Consumption is perhaps one of the realms in which it is most obvious that behaviour is established at least in part by the social context. That context has many components and we operate in a variety of communities and social realms (see Figure 4.3). In these various realms we may be influenced both to adopt normative consumption behaviours, and to develop behaviours that differentiate us, defining and communicating our unique personal identities.

Click here to see Figure 4.3

4.2.1 Positional consumption

Critiques of consumerism have often focused on status seeking behaviour – the desire to “keep up with the Jones's”, or even to do better than them. There is a pressure to differentiate our consumption, to prove and communicate our identity. It is perhaps in the discussion of competition for status that it is most apparent that individuals may be motivated to increase their consumption levels without improving their quality of life.

The 19^th century critique of the “conspicuous consumption” of the lower middle classes by Veblen (1898) is taken up in less snobbish terms by Hirsch (1977), with his discussion of positional goods and the need to establish social limits to growth, and by Frank (1985) in his work on “relative consumption”. Schor (1998) finds in the United States that television plays an increasingly strong role as celebrities are emulated as if they were high-status members of viewers' own communities. TV viewers try to keep up with the high-consuming lifestyles portrayed in primetime soap operas, rather than with their own next-door neighbours.

However, surveys and focus group studies find that status consumption is associated mostly with certain cultural subgroups. In studies in Britain (Dake and Thompson, 1999; Hines and Ames, 2000) these subgroups appear to be in a minority but such groups tend to be highly visible because they are consuming for public display. In Hines and Ames study, the consumers most likely to discuss consumption choices in their peer group, and most concerned with brand names and image, were younger than average.

4.2.2 Conformity

Schor (1998) finds that consumption is driven as much by the desire to belong to a group as by the desire for status. Thus, a large car enables parents to participate in a group of people who drive each other's children to school. Participation in social groups may require particular standards of dress, and reciprocity in treating others to restaurant meals. When it is clear that the alternative to belongingness is to be socially excluded, this kind of consumption appears less a luxury and more a necessity.

Chapter 2 noted that Bourdieu (1984) provided an empirical demonstration of the social determination of taste for inhabitants of Paris suburbs. People may adopt the consumption patterns of those around them simply because those are the options that are available; because they are emulating their parents and peers,; or because departures from the norm are viewed negatively, criticised and punished.

We internalise consumption norms in many different ways, and in different contexts:

• through habituation (e.g. exposure to foods and table manners in the home and at school; acclimatisation to heated or cooled building interiors at home, school and work; becoming accustomed to travel by car as a child, or by air for work)
• through collective narratives (e.g. parents' morality and ethics around money and property; public statements of politicians and celebrities that link consumption with quality of life)
• through the use of consumption or wealth as symbols of social position and esteem (including tobacco, alcohol and drug use and vehicle ownership as signs of adulthood; company cars; “prestige” homes; performance-related pay)
• through the association of wealth or consumption with pleasure, deeply held values, or with the good life (e.g. use of sweets as rewards; advertising links between products and family or other values; other media content including drama, lifestyle journalism, portrayal of celebrity lifestyles).

The social influence takes place at many different levels, within households and organisations, in local communities and cities, in nations and internationally. The media are a major part of the social influence on consumption (Michaelis, 2001). Surveys find, depending on the approach, that Europeans spend somewhere between 2 and 3½ hours per day watching television, twice as much time as they spend socialising (Eurostat, 2001; 2003b).

Baudrillard (1970) is scathing about the conformity of the majority in a system of mass consumption, promulgated through the mass media. Beck (1988) writes of “individualisation” in modern society as the illusion of individual choice and freedom which is actually conformity to a new set of social norms. We talk and think about ourselves as if we were free but are in fact trapped by a system that forces us to establish an identity – a story about ourselves – that will endure as we move through portfolio careers and ephemeral communities.

4.2.3 Lock-in and “ordinary” consumption

Chapter 3 addressed the role of technology, markets, and the physical and economic infrastructure in shaping and sometimes “locking-in” consumption patterns. These practical influences are quite widely acknowledged and fairly well understood by policy analysts. But social and cultural circumstances also contribute to a sense that consumption patterns are locked in (Sanne, 2002). We are captured by pressures to standardise our behaviour arising from the need to succeed in the job market, to behave in ways that are consistent with others' expectations. Once we accept a normal role in society – parent, employee, participant in social and civic activities – a great deal of “ordinary” consumption becomes almost inevitable. Those who do not own homes are subject to the condescension of local governments and communities; those without cars have a limited choice of work, home and services; and those who do not eat a “normal” diet may be constrained in their ability to maintain a social life and to spend time away from home. These pressures go a long way to explaining the apparent increase in citizens' “need” to consume (Segal, 1998).

4.2.4 Consumption, symbolism and identity

The role of consumption in formation and communication of identity has been explored in a variety of contexts. Douglas and Isherwood (1978) show from ethnographic studies, for example, how consumption is used to establish suitability for marriage. Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton (1981) show the importance of material possessions for personal identity and a psychological sense of meaning. However, the nature of the symbolism and the implications for the environment vary considerably among different cultures (Ger et al, 1998) – for example, a pressure cooker may represent a modern lifestyle in Turkey but simple tradition in Denmark.

The advertising industry has made particular use of the symbolic function of consumption, and indeed has augmented it tremendously. For example, TV advertising makes use of sophisticated artistic and dramatic techniques to create associations between particular brands and deeply held values in the collective consciousness. A make of car might represent reliability. A brand of coffee might symbolise sophistication. Or a clothing label might be associated with celebrity and status. The associations are also made with idealised lifestyles and identities – happy families use the right kind of ultrasoft toilet paper. Independent and confident young people use a certain underarm deodorant, and so on.

4.3 Collective discourse and personal taste

Despite the importance of the social forces and mechanisms mentioned above, it is perhaps discourse and narrative that is of most interest in the context of sustainable consumption (see box). It is through discourse that we question and affirm the values, goals and priorities that shape our system of production and consumption. We use discourse, in our own minds and with others, to make our conscious choices about how to live and consume. And it is partly through discourse that we learn from parents, teachers and others to associate particular practices with values, status and belongingness, and with meeting our own needs. Dickenson (1998) describes how people draw on discourse from many types of media content to construct their own narratives about food and food choices.

Current mainstream discourse, emerging over centuries of debate by philosophers, theologians, scientists, economists and politicians, encourages material consumption by emphasising:

• An understanding of human beings as autonomous, rational individuals whose highest potential is to be achieved through their work and demonstrated in increasing levels of material wealth and consumption
• An understanding of society as nothing more than a collection of individuals, whose collective purpose is to enable individual members to meet their needs
• An understanding of the natural world as a resource base for meeting human needs.

Thompson et al (1990) help to characterise the diversity of worldviews and discourses with “cultural theory” (CT). CT analyses social groups and cultural orientations along two axes: “group” and “grid”. Strong group implies strong links between people. Strong grid implies a high level of social differentiation. Strong group, strong grid gives a hierarchical society; weak group, weak grid gives an individualist society, and strong group, weak grid gives an egalitarian society. Dake and Thompson (1998) find from a study of households in northwest England that a) that cultural attitudes can be characterised effectively at the household level using the CT framework and b) households' CT types are correlated with their consumption patterns and lifestyles. Thompson's work in Nepal suggests that the framework is valid across wide differences of economic circumstance and social tradition.

Click here to see Figure 4.4

Dake and Thompson (1999) identify five distinct cultures of consumption which can be summarised as follows:

• Traditional consumers place emphasis on values such as duty and order. They eat a conventional diet and have homes that contain old or antique furniture reflecting continuity with the past. Their consumption patterns demonstrate their established place in the community.
• Cosmopolitan consumers emphasise values such as liberty and innovation. They are individualists who keep up with fashions in food, home furnishing and personal transport. These are the conspicuous and competitive consumers.
• Natural consumers are politically engaged, concerned with environmental and social values. In their consumption they tend to avoid anything artificial and distinguish “real” needs, which can be met by nature, from “false” needs that we cannot meet except by depriving future generations. Their consumption choices are a moral statement.
• Isolated or fatalist consumers do not make active choices, but muddle through, perhaps being constrained by budget or unable to take control of their consumption patterns for other reasons.
• Hermits are not socially isolated (as fatalists are) but make a positive choice to be independent of social expectations. They live simply without making a political or moral point of it.

Each of these cultural types or “solidarities” (as Dake and Thompson call them) has the potential to be concerned about, and take action for, environmental and social issues, but it has its own narrative about human nature, the environment, and appropriate solutions for sustainability (Thompson and Rayner, 1998). The mainstream discourse of consumerism and sustainability corresponds best to individualist culture.

A study of British consumers by MORI (Hines and Ames, 2000) also found five clusters, based on attitudes and approaches to ethical consumption. The clusters do not correspond exactly to Dake and Thompson's categories but there are some interesting overlaps, with the largest groups corresponding roughly to “traditional”, “cosmopolitan” and “fatalist” consumers, and a small group (5% of the sample) which Hines and Ames called “Global Watchdogs” corresponding roughly to Dake and Thompson's “natural” consumers. All of the groups except for the one that appears closest to the “fatalist” solidarity shared a concern about environmental and social issues, but they had different ways of acting, or not acting, on their concern. Only the Global Watchdogs were prepared to make significant lifestyle choices based on ethical concerns.

4.4 Social and cultural change in consumption scenarios

Whereas Thompson et al avoid expressing a preference for any of the types, and suggest that a healthy society has a mixture of types, other studies suggest that societies pass through a succession of different cultural forms, which may be healthy at different times. Beck and Cowan (1996) develop a theory of social and organisational change based on a more complex cultural typology, within which CT types would represent a limited range of worldviews and modes of behaviour. The typology is illustrated in Table 1. Each mode of culture and consciousness in this system combines a view of human nature, a worldview, a sense of the purpose of life, and a set of core values. It may be expressed in personal and communal narratives, in social structures, and in individual and collective behaviour.

The modes emerge in succession, alternating between individualist differentiation and collective integration, liberty and belongingness. The development of consciousness is a dialectic process leading to increasing complexity, in which each phase reacts against and builds on the mental structures of the previous stage. In healthy development, each stage incorporates the functions of the earlier phases in a new synthesis. A similar approach is adopted in various theories of personality type, which view healthy development as the incorporation of additional attributes and functions. As we develop, we gain greater flexibility, maintaining the capabilities, conceptual frameworks and emotional patterns of earlier phases, although we also sometimes become trapped in the needs or limitations of those phases. Hence Beck and Cowan's phrase, “spiral development”, to emphasise that developmental progress is not simple and linear nor firmly bound to particular ages or sequences. At each step a particular mode or complex of worldviews, attitudes, values and goals is expressed (Beck and Cowan use their own language for these complexes but here they are referred to simply as “modes”; we have also adopted our own labels for the modes, which Beck and Cowan refer to by colours; see Table 4.1).

Table 4.1. Psycho-social modes (based on Beck and Cowan, 1996)

There is an obvious correspondence with the CT individualist, hierarchist and egalitarian types; fatalists could correspond to the kin-attachment mode; and some hermits might correspond to the holistic mode. As in CT, at the heart of each of these psycho-social modes is a set of understandings or narratives about the world, human nature, preferred social forms, and the meaning of life. In this framework, the dominant modes in the politics of industrialised countries are the hierarchic, strategic and pluralistic; however, many groups in society function in the kin-attachment and heroic power modes. Beck and Cowan emphasise that it is normal and healthy for individuals and groups to function in several of these modes, depending on circumstances.

Beck and Cowan's modes correspond roughly, but not exactly, to stages of development identified by others (e.g. Torbert et al., 1991; Wilber, 1981; 1996). There is also some association with Maslow's hierarchy of needs and with Piaget's and Kohlberg's stages of cognitive and moral development.

Questions about the future of consumption can be framed in this model. First, there might be a shift in behaviour within one of the modes (e.g. as a result of government policies suggested in the right hand column of Table 1, or because solar panels replace fast cars as the dominant fashion accessory symbols of individualists). Second, consumption behaviour can change by a shift in the prevalence people and organisations operating in different modes. For example, there might be a shift from individualism to egalitarianism, with a much higher value placed on environmental and social concerns). Third, new modes might emerge, with creative development of new behavioural forms.

One possible pattern for a large-scale shift is:

1. New technology adopted by a small group of wealthy individualist technophiles.
2. The technology is taken up by celebrities and becomes a fashion item.
3. The technology is adopted by a wider group of individualists, and by young people (often behaving in a hierarchist mode of following celebrity leadership).
4. As the market grows, costs fall, more people are able to adopt the technology.
5. Others (hierarchists and fatalists especially) adopt the technology as it becomes the norm, and the only option.

An example might be mobile phones.

Another possible pattern is:

1. A social or environmental concern leads a small group (Global Watchdogs or egalitarians) to seek out ethically-sourced products.
2. The products begin to be sold in specialist shops.
3. Celebrities take up the new products or the concern reaches the wider public through media coverage.
4. Other cultural groups begin to adopt the product – individualists incorporating it into their personal identity/image; hierarchists viewing it as a social duty.
5. The product becomes more widely available (e.g. through supermarkets), advertised and used.
6. Government regulations or supplier policies lead to the product becoming a mainstream choice.

Examples might include Forest Stewardship Council timber or fair trade foods.

These processes have much in common with the dynamics of technological innovation, starting with a process of search and experimentation by a small group, with new behaviours then diffusing and being adapted by other groups, eventually to die out or be adopted by society at large. This innovation and diffusion process is fundamentally unpredictable, in much the same way that technological change is unpredictable. The behaviours that will dominate Europe in thirty years time may already be present now in cultural niches somewhere in the world, but we cannot tell which they are in advance. All that future studies can do is to identify candidate behaviours and narratives, and explore the implications if they were to spread or become dominant.

Some of the major questions about the future of consumption relate to cultural tensions within Europe over a wide range of issues. They include broad social and political challenges:

• Reform of the Common Agricultural Policy, in particular relating to the growth of the European Union and trade relations with the United States. The individualist/strategic narrative calls for policy reform and free markets. The bureaucratic, heroic power and kin-attachment narratives call for market protection and competitive tariffs. The synthetic narrative calls for policy reform, making use of stakeholder processes to identify targeted support for vulnerable groups.
• Economic slow-down and attitudes to the Euro
• Controversy over military/shared defence relations with the United States and the European role in the “War Against Terrorism”
• Increasing migration from Africa and Asia.

They also include issues related more specifically to consumption and the environment:

• Responses to technologies posing ethical questions and health risks, such as genetic modification and cloning, nanotechnology, nuclear power, anti-ageing drugs and animal welfare
• Attitudes to the environment, in particular climate change and loss of biodiversity
• The emergence of children, young people, and the retired as significant consumer groups.

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Version 1.0 November 2004, © Danish Environmental Protection Agency