Consumption as product use

exceeds the regenerative capacity of the fishery, and why fishers whose livelihoods depend on the fishery are responding more to market signals than to ecological signals. I return to this point in the next section. In sum, when common usages of consumption are explored in some depth, the concept of con- sumption becomes slippery and the utility of their applications doubtful. Conflating consumption with overall economic activity risks sliding into a conventional approach to environmental prob- lems, namely, as problems of production that only macro-level governmental policies can correct. Conflating it with materialism or maldistribution only confuses other agendas and misses the eco- logical component. And conflating it with popula- tion or technology issues obscures many of the driving forces. An objective of the remainder of this article is to suggest ways of specifying and distinguishing the issue of consumption and envi- ronmental impact to avoid such conceptual and, eventually, policy problems. Not to do so is to risk the common tendencies of jumping on the bandwagon with the latest buzzword in the envi- ronmental debate, stretching the new concept to encompass all conceivable concerns and, in the process, forfeiting any advantage — for analysis or for behavior change — that may accrue to a new perspective on environmental problems. The risk, in short, is to simply re-label old problems and old solutions without generating new insights. The careful analyst and activist must accept the possi- bility that the consumption topic may, in the end, not yield new insights into environmental prob- lems. Consumption may be no more than a buzz- word. A premise in this article, however, is that it can be more. Below, I suggest two general analytic ap- proaches that may push the topic beyond mere fad. I assert that, in pursuing the research topic of consumption and environment, one has to make some basic choices, each of which has its own limitations. One choice is between accepting the prevailing production – consumption, supply – de- mand, producer – consumer dichotomy, on the one hand, and seeking an alternative framework on the other. In the production – consumption di- chotomy, one can investigate consumption via price and income elasticities and purchasing pat- terns. These are well developed in microeconomics and marketing studies and need no elaboration here. To focus on environmental effects, however, one can investigate a broad range of product-re- lated decisions of which the purchase decision is only one. I explore some of these in the next section below. This approach attempts to open the black box of consumer sovereignty and con- sumer preferences. It also rejects the exclusive focus on market purchasing and considers a range of behaviors that comprise the end use of re- sources and products. The limitation of this ap- proach is the tendency to focus on marketplace activity to the exclusion of a wider range of human activities that are, in some sense, ‘consum- ing’. Moreover, environmental impacts tend to be incorporated as add-ons, not as integral compo- nents of the analytic framework. Thus, in the following section I posit a framework that begins with material provisioning and its biophysical ef- fects. The aim is to suggest not only how research on consumption can transcend the production – consumption dichotomy and how it can follow different paths but, importantly, how the analytic starting points — price determination and pur- chasing behavior versus resource use — can lead to very different questions and prescriptions.

3. Consumption as product use

Consumption as the necessary complement to production is eating the apple, burning the log, wearing the socks. A consumption and environ- ment research agenda must examine such deci- sions and influences for their biophysical impacts. A conventional starting point is the decision to purchase. From the prevailing commercial per- spective, especially that of retailing, whatever hap- pens after purchase is of little concern unless the consumer’s anticipation of subsequent decisions affects the purchase decision. But from an envi- ronmental impact perspective, the critical decision is a combination of purchase and product use decisions where, in some cases, major purchases drive resource use Stern et al., 1997, p. 130 and, in others, the patterns of use are most important Nordman, 1995. Disaggregating the relative impacts of purchase and use decisions is certainly critical to the con- sumption and environment agenda. But a more extensive approach would be to go beyond ‘product’ to consider the ‘non-purchase’ decision. That is, individuals consume to meet needs. Sometimes those needs can only be met with purchased items — say, grain, electric power and high technology equipment. But many other needs can be obtained through productive effort, indi- vidually or collectively. Fresh produce can be purchased at a grocery store or grown oneself. Personal transportation can be had by driving to work or walking or at least walking part way. Community members can raise funds to purchase playground equipment and pay to have it in- stalled or they can collect materials and build it themselves. If one has a need for musical experi- ence, one can buy an album or call a few musician friends over for a jam session. In each of these examples, a priori, one cannot know for sure which activity has the least environmental impact. But an initial and plausible operating assumption is that the commercial, purchased choices are more a part of the current trends — ever- increasing throughput, ever more ‘manufactured’ resource use see below — than the non- commercial, and thus have a greater impact. Little if any research has been done on peoples’ choices not to purchase or to seek less consump- tive, less material-intensive means of satisfying a need De Young, 1990 – 1991; Maniates, 1998. The reason may be obvious: it is very hard to get an analytic or empirical handle on an act that entails not doing something. But my hunch and it can only be a hunch given the state of knowl- edge on this kind of question is that this gap exists in large part because the question is out of, or contrary to, the dominant belief system where value is presumed to inhere in market transac- tions. A consumption perspective that is more expansive, that recognizes that individuals actu- ally meet their needs with non-commercial or relatively non-material means, makes the non-pur- chase decision a critical focus of inquiry. To develop the research agenda within the con- sumption – production dichotomy, then, product use, not just purchase, must be addressed. What is more, both post-purchase decisions and non-pur- chase decisions must be included in the analysis. At least two empirical questions arise. One, under what conditions do individuals switch from pur- chasing a high environmental impact item to a relatively low impact item, when impact is evalu- ated not just in production but in the use of the product itself? This question might fit existing research programs including that of energy use e.g. Cleveland et al., 1984; Schipper, 1997; household metabolism e.g. Noorman and Uiterkamp, 1998; industrial ecology e.g. Ke- oleian and Menerey, 1994; Graedel and Allenby, 1995 and of market research e.g. Richins, 1994; Ahuvia and Wong, 1997; Ger, 1997. Two, and this may well be the most difficult yet most impor- tant question, under what conditions do individu- als opt for a non-commercial or relati6ely non-material response to meet a need? Research does exist on intrinsic satisfaction as it relates to conservation behavior De Young, 1990 – 1991, subjective well-being Inglehart and Abramson, 1994; Andrews and Withey, 1976, and work and leisure Scitovsky, 19761992; Schor, 1995. Much of this research could be extended to consumption patterns and their environmental impacts. Conducting such research within the framework of the supply – demand, producer – consumer di- chotomy is important if, for no other reason, production has been the dominant focus, not only in economics but in the economic strands of other disciplines including political science, sociology, and anthropology. Environmental and policy studies generally have also been primarily in- formed by the dichotomy. It may also be the safest research tact, given the hegemony of the economistic belief system. Unpacking and ‘de-ag- gregating’ the demand function for environmental impacts can enrich existing research traditions and inform policymaking and do so without chal- lenging their underlying assumptions. But for those seeking a more transformative approach to environmental problems, the prevailing di- chotomy is probably more of a hindrance than an aid. It tends to constrain the analysis to market functioning and malfunctioning where ‘the envi- ronment’ is merely an externality. A more radical approach, one that challenges this dichotomy and its propensity to relegate con- sumption to a black box or to the marginal status of emotion or personal values, would be to treat all resource use as consuming and ask what risks are entailed in patterns of resource acquisition, processing, and distribution. This approach would be more consistent with the ecological economics perspective where human economic activity is seen as an open subset of a finite and closed biophysical system. Consuming is that part of human activity that ‘uses up’ material, energy, and other valued things Daly, 1996.

4. Consumption as ‘using up’