Situated Consumption : A Basis for Policy Development

In a recent paper on sustainable consumption Eva Heiskanen and Mika Pantzar introduced consumer behavior to the discussion of global sustainability.1 In fact, they argued that consumers bear the main responsibility for environmental degradation in a market economy. While there is also a need to take into account the behavior of businesses, given the severe damages that companies cause by not taking appropriate environmental precautions, Heiskanen and Pantzar are accurate in recognizing that consumers bear a heavy responsibility for wasteful energy consumption, excessive accumulation of possessions, and indifferent attitudes toward product disposal. They state that we still lack a clear definition of sustainable consumption and argue that consumer research has not yet focused on the most important issues. I agree with these points as well as with their observation that green consumerism is too limited a concept. As they make clear, some larger theoretical framework is needed in order to better define the relations between consumers, users, and the environment. What makes any attempt to characterize this relationship particularly difficult is that consumers and sustainability have not yet been considered within a macro-framework that combines data on global capital flows, available resources, the production of goods, and the inequitable conditions of consumption around the world. There is a need for some form of global systems approach that can bring consumer behavior on the micro level into relation with macro conditions that directly or indirectly affect it. By creating a global context within which to study local consumer behavior, it should be possible to more accurately describe the environmental implications of that behavior. The models generated by the Club of Rome have demonstrated the possibility of synthesizing and analyzing large amounts of data but these models have focused more on the use of resources at a very general level and have not addressed the ways that the real behavior of consumers in all its diversity affects this process. Environmental economists have long argued that we do not have the proper calculus to account for the real costs of consumption. Many of these costs, they claim, remain hidden and must be paid by governments in the form of environmental clean-up campaigns, recycling programs and the like. Ways of restructuring this calculus have been proposed but are generally considered to be so politically undesirable that they are not translated into new regulations and taxes. Hence, the real costs and consequences of the high consumption in developed countries