Ecological Economics 31 1999 347 – 363
ANALYSIS
Consumption and environment: some conceptual issues
Thomas Princen
Workshop on Consumption and En6ironment, School of Natural Resources and En6ironment, The Uni6ersity of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
48109
-
1115
, USA Received 20 July 1998; received in revised form 1 February 1999; accepted 4 February 1999
Abstract
Consumption ranks with population and technology as a major driver of environmental change and yet researchers and policymakers have paid it scant attention. When the topic is addressed, its conceptual foundations are either
taken as self-evident or are conflated with production, overall economic activity, materialism, maldistribution, population or technology. The risk is to adopt the latest buzzword in the environmental debate, stretch the concept
to encompass all conceivable concerns, and forfeit any advantage — for analysis or for behavior change — that may accrue to a new perspective on environmental problems. Consumption must be distinguished conceptually from other
approaches to environmental problems. One approach is to work within the consumption – production dichotomy, examining not just purchasing but product use and non-purchase decisions. A second approach, one that challenges
the prevailing dichotomy and its propensity to relegate consumption to a black box, is to treat all resource use as consuming, that is, ‘using up’, and ask what risks are entailed. Consumption can then be seen as material provisioning
where risks increase with increasing distance from the resource; as background, misconsumption, or overconsumption depending on the social concern raised; or as a chain of decisions that compel the behaviors of restraint and resistance
among ‘producers’. Pursuing the consumption and environment topic engenders resistance among a wide range of actors for reasons that are personal, analytic, and policy related. Nevertheless, the topic appears to have the potential
of helping analysts and others transcend conventional approaches to excess throughput. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords
:
Consumption; Environment; Policy www.elsevier.comlocateecolecon
1. Introduction
On a per capita basis, humans, especially those in the Northern industrialized countries and those
in capital cities of the Southern countries, are consuming more resources than the planet can
regenerate, and filling waste sinks at a more rapid rate than the planet can assimilate. Documenta-
tion for this premise is abundant e.g. World Commission on Environment and Development,
1987; Turner et al., 1990; OCED, 1995; Postel et
Tel.: + 1-734-647-9227; fax: + 1-734-936-2195. E-mail address
:
tprincenumich.edu T. Princen 0921-800999 - see front matter © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 2 1 - 8 0 0 9 9 9 0 0 0 2 8 - 2
al., 1996; The Royal Society of London and the United States National Academy of Sciences,
1997; World Resources Institute, 1998. The fact that, for example, energy in some countries is
used more efficiently than 20 years ago and that populations have stabilized in some places does
not negate the premise. Aggregate consumption of energy continues to increase, suggesting that con-
sumption as a research topic, let alone a target of public and private policy, is critical. Consumption
or, more precisely, overconsumption, ranks with population and technology as a major driver of
global environmental change. Consequently, in this article I take overconsumption as given.
1
If consumption is so important from both a research and policy perspective, what is remark-
able is the scant attention paid it by researchers and policymakers.
2
This neglect can be attributed either to simple ignorance and the fact that im-
pacts are diffuse or distanced and thus not dis- cernible to individuals or countries. Or the neglect
can be attributed to several prevailing beliefs. One is that the world has seen several centuries of
ever-increasing wealth, attributed in large part to human ingenuity. This belief suggests that, be-
cause such ingenuity has no limits, there is no reason why the increase in wealth should have
limits. Technologies have solved problems in ways totally unimaginable in the past. As new problems
arise and the demand for solutions increase, new technologies will emerge, as they always have.
A second common belief is that, while work may be onerous, consumption is pleasurable.
Consumption is good and more is always better. This belief has a significant, yet rather recent,
history Leach, 1993, pp. 231 – 244. For the great bulk of human experience, the problem of greatest
concern was underproduction. When that was largely eliminated with rapid industrialization in
the 19th century, the problem shifted. In the US there was a widespread fear that demand was
insufficient to absorb the productive capacity of the country. At risk were the idling of heavily
capitalized industrial plants and equipment with large debt loads, millions of jobs, and the great-
ness of the US as a world power. In short, the problem had become o6erproduction and, its
corollary, underconsumption. Economists, business people, religious leaders and policy makers
worked together to stimulate consumption. By developing new concepts e.g. utility, insatiability
and by emphasizing some aspects of human be- havior e.g. the need for acceptance and status
through material accumulation they stimulated consumption in part by construing material con-
sumption as the primary source of satisfaction where more is always better. And in part, they did
so by construing consumption as a patriotic duty, a refrain that is still heard in the US, especially
around holiday shopping time when sales are down.
3
A comprehensive research agenda on consump- tion and environment must address these beliefs
and concepts. It must show how they may have been perfectly sensible, indeed, civic and patriotic,
when overproduction
and underconsumption
were pervasive problems and when natural re- source abundance could be reasonably assumed.
A research agenda on overconsumption, there- fore, must describe the biophysical trends and
categorize contemporary beliefs and practices that perpetuate those trends. But it must also ask what
1
I also take underconsumption as a given. That is, at least a billion people have too little food, clothing, and shelter. But
in this paper I address the overconsumption of the billion or so who consume far more than their basic needs and, it is
reasonable to assume, contribute directly or indirectly to the underconsumption of the impoverished billion. For documen-
tation of one such pattern of connected over- and undercon- sumption, see Mitchell 1996.
2
There are some notable exceptions in the last few years, especially in Europe. See, e.g. the projects at Lancaster Uni-
versity d.southertonlancaster.ac.uk
and University
of Groningen K.J.Noormanfwn.rug.nl; also, projects at Indi-
ana University wilkrindiana.edu and the University of Michigan tprincenumich.edu.
3
Consumption as a duty is also heard among financial leaders with respect to the ‘sluggish’ Japanese economy. For
example: ‘World financial leaders have been hoping that [Japanese housewives] will spend away Japan’s worst economic
malaise in recent history. Consumer spending accounts for almost 60 of Japan’s gross domestic product. And because
Japan is the world’s second-largest economy, any reluctance on the part of its consumers is felt worldwide.’ New York
Times, May 29, 1998, C1,4, ‘Shopping for a Recovery: In Japan, Housewives Seen as Key to Reviving Economy’.
distinguishes a consumption approach to en6iron- mental problems from other approaches. It must
conceptualize the problem, separate consumption from other problems and show how a consump-
tion perspective raises new questions — analytic and policy oriented — and, ideally, generates new
insights into environmental and related issues. This article deals with the latter — conceptualizing
a consumption and environment perspective.
Before proceeding, a methodological note is in order. A research agenda can be set either by
adapting an existing framework to a newly iden- tified social problem or it can specify the problem
first and then build concepts to fit. I opt primarily for the latter on the assumption that few existing
frameworks of social or natural analysis are ori- ented to the problem of excessive material
throughput of one species. What is more, as I will show, employing an existing framework risks con-
cept stretching, fitting the problem to concepts that were designed for a different purpose. For
example, it is tempting to appropriate consumer theory in microeconomics as a basis of a con-
sumption and environment agenda. One would begin by defining consumption as the purchasing
of goods and services in the marketplace. Envi- ronmental impacts would be assessed and added
to production impacts to estimate the total mar- ket failure of a purchased good. When the pur-
pose of conventional economic analysis is to explain market behavior and prescribe corrections
to enhance efficiencies, this may indeed be use- ful — that is, useful to the pre-existing objectives
of microeconomic analysis. But when the purpose is to explain how consumption affects the envi-
ronment, how it relates to ecologically excessive throughput, then marketplace purchasing is only
one dimension of consumption. Other dimensions such as product use and non-market acquisition
are at least as important and yet will be down played, if not completely ignored.
In this article, then, I distinguish the consump- tion issue from other ‘big issues’ by first arguing
that the consumption problem is not the problem of production, overall human or economic activ-
ity, equity, technology, or population. I then ar- gue that, in pursuing the consumption and
environment topic, researchers must choose either to adopt the production – consumption dichotomy
or to build an alternative framework. On the first count, I note several ways to expand existing
research agendas. On the second, I posit three means of defining consumption as ‘using up’ ma-
terial, energy, and other things of human value. I finish by noting problems in pursuing such re-
search, showing why actors in all contexts tend to ignore or dismiss the topic. Along the way, I
explore ways of setting boundaries on the agenda. Boundary setting is critical because a consump-
tion agenda, like a sustainable development or a population or a peace agenda, can easily be
stretched by analysts and practitioners alike to encompass all imaginable concerns. The effect, as
these other agendas have experienced, is to dilute the research, to lose focus, and, most egregiously,
to simply re-label old problems and old solutions. Also, I should stress that my purpose is not to
extensively survey and critique existing literature, nor is it to generate a list of topical issues for
consumption applications. Rather, my aim is to reason out some of the fundamental conceptual
and boundary questions. My experience in pursu- ing the topic of consumption and the environment
is that, to the extent the question is addressed, these fundamentals are commonly skirted.
2. The consumption problem, or, the problem of specifying the consumption problem
