From the University of Chicago Press Journals |
Are environmental and social problems such as global warming and poverty the result of inadequate governmental regulations or does the burden fall on our failure as consumers to make better consumption choices? According to a new study in the Journal of Consumer Research, responsible consumption shifts the burden for solving global problems from governments to consumers and ultimately benefits corporations more than society.
“When businesses convince politicians to encourage responsible consumption instead of implementing policy changes to solve environmental and social problems, business earns the license to create new markets while all of the pressure to solve the problem at hand falls on the individual consumer. For example, global warming is blamed on consumers unwilling to make greener choices rather than the failure of governments to regulate markets to the benefit of society and the environment,” write authors Markus Giesler and Ela Veresiu (both York University).
The authors studied the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland in order to examine the influence of economic elites on the creation of four types of responsible consumers: the bottom-of-the-pyramid consumer, the green consumer, the health-conscious consumer, and the financially literate consumer.
The authors identified a process that shifts responsibility from the state and corporations to the individual consumer. First, economic elites redefine the nature of the problem from political to one of individual consumption (for example, global warming stems from consumers failing to cultivate a sustainable lifestyle). Next, economic elites promote the idea that the only viable solution is for consumers to change their behavior. Third, new markets are created in order to turn this solution into a material reality (eco-friendly light bulbs, hybrid automobiles, energy efficient appliances). Finally, consumers must adopt this new ethical self-understanding.
“The implications of our study are far-reaching and relevant for consumers and policy makers alike. While the responsible consumption myth offers a powerful vision of a better world through identity-based consumption, upon closer inspection, this logic harbors significant personal and societal costs. The responsible consumption myth promotes the idea that governments can never achieve harmony between competing economic and social or environmental goals and that this instead requires a global community of morally enlightened consumers who are empowered to make a difference through the marketplace,” the authors conclude.
Markus Giesler and Ela Veresiu. “Creating the Responsible Consumer: Moralistic Governance Regimes and Consumer Subjectivity.” Journal of Consumer Research: October 2014. For more information, contact Markus Giesler (mgiesler@schulich.yorku.ca) or visit http://ejcr.org/.
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For example, global warming is blamed on consumers unwilling to make greener choices….
I’m sure they will define what those greener choices are for us……in the mean time, who exactly are they addressing this kumbaya BS to? People watching Oprah and the View?…..or people cutting other people’s heads off?
Seems somebody came up, finally, with a true global warming technology. My money is on it!: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0_tJjWHZOo
I meant global warming FRIENDLY technology
“… failure of governments to regulate markets to the benefit of society and the environment.”
Wow! At what point did this become one of the tasks of government? This is deeply disturbing.
” …responsible consumption shifts the burden for solving global problems from governments to consumers and ultimately benefits corporations more than society.
“When businesses convince politicians to encourage responsible consumption instead of implementing policy changes to solve environmental and social problems, business earns the license to create new markets …”
Oh, how terrible. We’d be creating new jobs and new products without permission from central planning!
“…while all of the pressure to solve the problem at hand falls on the individual consumer….”
OMG, we can’t allow INDIVIDUALS to make their OWN decisions! INDIVIDUALS can’t be responsible!
“Are environmental and social problems such as global warming and poverty the result of inadequate governmental regulations or does the burden fall on our failure as consumers to make better consumption choices? ”
What a way to bait the question. Poverty for example is caused neither by consumers making bad choices, nor by lack of government regulation, in fact I would argue that poverty is caused by government overregulation.
Global warming isn’t even caused primarily by humans so that question is totally silly.
Let’s see… Government telling consumers what they can or cannot buy, forcing them to buy what they otherwise would not or the free choice of free people to choose according to their own wishes and corporations making money by providing people with things they are willing to buy. Top-down, elitist, command-control vs. Freedom and making money. I vote freedom and making money.
Well they got the bit about benefiting corporations correct, but that happens every time government tries to change people’s habits against their will. No matter what our environmental choices are it is not for the ruling and celebrity classes to decide but for the people to decide and the market to react. Another piece of academic conceit.
Ugh.
“…poverty the result of inadequate governmental regulations or does the burden fall on our failure as consumers to make better consumption choices”
How about that poverty is not the result of human activity but the natural state of human affairs that capitalism has mostly lifted us from? Seriously – how can one look at human history and conclude that poverty is the result of government inaction? Ignorant beyond belief!
Gasp ! Personal responsibility?That would mean….FREEDOM!
The whole premise is that we have a governmental organization which can accurately identify “problems” while ignoring the obvious incentives that bureaucrats and governments have to find new problems to fix.
Of course. This is like the little signs in hotels and other business establishments encouraging patrons to “save the planet” by using less water, less toilet tissue, few towels, etc.
Those savings have nothing to do with the planet and everything to do with corporate profit.
Corporations in almost every sector are finding ways to profit from the AGW fairy tale.This is what maintains the scam.
Goodness, some of you guys from over the pond are learning fast from the faceless ones in Brussels.
I pointed out to some friends who were supportive of the Occupy movement, that the group of people most likely to gain from policy introduced to fight climate change, would be the bankers running carbon credit schemes. I was worried for a while that their heads might explode.
No kidding.
From a textSocial Market Foundation press release in January 2008:
1400 watt vacuum cleaner mandates… thats all one needs to know.
Why must they?
Isn’t the cause and effect the other way round.
Consumers adopt this new ethical self-understanding (influenced by the media and Governments).
And then corporations move to exploit the market.
Then they may be self-perpetuating. But initially, surely, the push for a new ethical self-understanding is due to the consumers themselves.
I speculate that secularisation has led to a dearth of meaning especially with respect to virtue. This, I propose, is the root of the new ethical self-understanding.
No green energy source is sustainable since fossils fuel is used to manufacture it, replace it, and maintain it. Renewable and sustainability are green buzz words that signify nothing.
This alone makes this article not worth the effort to read.
I refuse to quit using what made our society strong even if it was proven that it caused warming. What we do best is adapt on a daily basis. Anything that hinders that is anti human, and should be opposed.
Has this experiment not already been tried out in the US – Prohibition? Banning the sale and public consumption of alcohol on the grounds that the public was not capable of drinking responsibly.
Did the results justify repeating the experiment with other commodities ?
Energy-efficient light bulbs, appliances and cars do benefit the consumer, by reducing the consumer’s energy expenses. The extra cost of more efficient items usually pays for itself within the lifetime of the item, and usually within a few years. Replacing an incandescent lamp with a CFL often has the CFL paying for itself in less than a year. It’s a shame that many consumers think more short-term than that, and many landlords provide the cheapest, least efficient lights and appliances they can.
Hey, folks! It’s the University of Chicago. In their ivory towers they can’t see the disasters that over-regulation and social control have caused all around them.
I’m currently driving down the the west coast of the US. I noted the number of “Adopt a Highway” signs: indications that this particular stretch is cleaned of garbage by the Women’s Institute of Blodgett or some-such place. While a worthwhile, morally and PC correct statement of community involvement and ownership, it struck me somewhat as a product this article speaks to: the transfer of social, i.e. organized government, responsibility to the individual. The State literally pays for the highways, but then walks away. If it is a mess, it is because individuals in the area leave it a mess.
The general society – the litterers – and the government, who taxes you, are not responsible. What looks like a good thing, a morally superior thing, is a transfer of cost and organization to the free side of the charge sheet.
I don’t like big government. Yet cleaning the nations’ highways is a large scale task. One would think that a large-scale solution, for example, having convicted criminals in pink suits pick up trash as part of their “payback” to society – would be a useful endeavor.
But, wait – that would cause someone to have a lowered self-esteem.
We really need to focus on who pays truly and who does truly. When a DiCaprio flys all over the world and a Gore has multiple houses, we can see that the elite bear more responsibility than the rest of us for whatever damage they do to society and the planet. There should be, in this case, a rich-tax for the affluent effluent. The market can make better choices, for sure, but if the rich think buying a Hummer to drive around the city is a wise and green choice – their Company makes them – then they should be looked at for the hypocrites they are. Not the smart, wise and successful con men they are.
We are conned not by the rich or big business, but by the unthinking liberal eco-green urban philosopher who talk shows hold out as the morally superior. It is up to You, not Me.
Ponder on this inconvenient truth, Leonard and All.
I just keep my carbon footprint smaller than Al Gore’s.
When businesses or other special interest groups lobby for laws or regulations that benefit themselves at the expense of everyone else, it is called “rent seeking.”
Rent seeking is a natural by-product of having government involved in virtually every aspect of our lives. The solution is to reduce the scope and power of government.