ANALYSISInstitutionalisation of sustainable consumption patterns based on shared use
Introduction
The global market and the purchasing power of an increasingly wealthy population in industrialised countries are setting examples of consumption and lifestyles for the entire world. What is clear is that these patterns and levels of consumption are very energy- and resource-intensive. They create significant amounts of waste and lead to severe environmental problems. In order to combat associated environmental impacts, it is necessary to consider production- and consumption-related problems from a systems perspective. Until recently, consumption was considered as part of production and all the problems were to be solved by technological development (Dunlap and van Liere, 1984). Consequently, investments in improving environmental profiles of production processes and products are being made and some positive results achieved. However, it has been realised that technological innovation only partially addresses the problem and that increasing scale of consumption may considerably outweigh the resulting improvements of processes and products (Khazzoom, 1980). It seems, that although improving efficiency of products and processes makes environmental sense, it is not enough in order to combat the scale of problems we face. Special attention should be given to current consumption levels and patterns.
The issue of sustainable consumption has found its way into policy debates and documents for over a decade. We can see some positive changes in international and national policy documents that acknowledge the problem of consumption and discuss ways to address it through public information and awareness raising programmes, eco-labelling and public procurement. Beside policy initiatives, there are also examples of individuals or communities devising their own ways of consuming, which drastically reduce environmental impacts of households. Some initiatives experiment with substituting products with services by sharing and pooling material goods, or by leasing and renting them, aiming to increase the intensity of product use and thus reduce the material intensity of each use episode. Unfortunately, many of these grass-root attempts are temporary and inefficient from a customer and environmental point of view. Furthermore, we observe that although various environmentally sound alternatives exist, people are either not always aware of them or do not readily accept them. It is therefore apparent that even though the problem of consumption is being recognised to some extent, practical ways of addressing unsustainable patterns and levels of consumption have not yet found their way into daily routines. There are several reasons for this. First of all, our understanding of the forces shaping certain consumption patterns is still rather limited. Secondly, increasing consumption of material- and energy-intensive goods is seen as the primary way towards economic growth (Heilbroner, 1985) and ultimately, happiness. Therefore, for industries, it is unthinkable to consider other ways of satisfying customer needs than through material artefacts. Thirdly, environmental impacts of consumption are so diffuse that it is difficult to pinpoint a solution. Fourthly, actors who propagate more sustainable consumption (e.g. NGOs) lack decision-making power and need governmental support. Fifthly, consumption is distilled in society and touches each and every one of us. It is therefore not possible to separate consumption from other activities, because purchasing and consuming choices relate to almost any aspect of human behaviour. This implies that changing consumption patterns requires much more comprehensive change in society than changing production patterns and perhaps needs a longer time. The level of current understanding and the scale of required change suggest that consumption as a research field and as a target for policy is vital.
This research addresses the first problem—insufficient understanding of forces that affect consumption behaviour—by investigating critical factors that affect institutionalisation of existing alternatives to unsustainable patterns and levels of consumption. Consumption is ultimately a matter of individual or organisational choice, but purchasing decisions are bounded by existing institutional settings in society. Therefore, this paper develops a framework for analysis based on institutional and product–service system perspectives. The three areas in the business-to-consumer (B2C) markets—car sharing, washing services and collective use of power tools—are analysed.
The choice of the cases was determined by availability of data from primary research and by the richness of secondary sources. Primary sources of information include interviews with relevant stakeholders (e.g. interviews with Swedish car sharing cooperatives and European commercial rental and car-pooling companies). The data on washing services comes from interviews with stakeholders who manage communal washing centres in Sweden, including Electrolux, producer of washing machines for the centres, housing companies, which have facilities for the washing centres, and planning organisations, which plan new housing areas, including washing centres. The section on power tools is based on the survey of power tool rental companies, interviews with care takers in communities, managers of community-based tool sharing systems and producers of power tools, as well as on the survey of 618 households regarding ownership, use and renting of power tools. Secondary sources include literature sources on European car sharing organisations, historical facts and governmental policies and guidelines regarding household washing, results of a Swedish national survey of washing patterns in households.
The results of the study suggest that institutionalisation of alternative consumption practices depends on institutional settings, on how the alternative systems are developed and on socio-cultural context. The study intends to assist in further efforts of developing product–service systems in consumer markets.
Section snippets
Consumption problematic
According to conventional economists, consumption satisfies basic human needs and improves quality of life. Economic growth has deemed to deliver better nutrition, more secure and healthier lives, improved longevity and other benefits (Jackson and Marks, 1999). However, taking into account constraints of assimilating capacity of earth and potential limits of natural resources, consumption patterns and levels of wealthy industrialised countries turn into problem. The situation is further
Institutional perspective on consumption
Institutional theory posits that individual behaviour shapes and is shaped by social institutions1 and investigates how certain practices become institutionalised (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991). The ultimate assertion is that institutions provide certain meaning and stability to social behaviour (Giddens, 1984). The two
Framework for analysis of B2C cases
As was described in Section 2, the product–service system concept is an emerging field of inquiry based on functional thinking. We define a product–service system as a system of products, services, networks of actors and supporting infrastructure that is developed to be competitive, satisfy customers and be more environmentally sound than traditional business models (Mont, 2001). A framework for further analysis is based on this definition and includes four PSS elements and three criteria for
Analysis of B2C cases
In this section, we analyse three cases: car sharing, washing services and collective use of power tools from PSS and institutional perspectives.
Regulatory and socio-cultural perspective
The existence of a regulatory framework that directly or indirectly stimulates the development of sharing or rental systems is of importance for institutionalisation of more sustainable practices in our society. An example of such regulatory intervention may be the European Directive on air quality (European Commission, 1999), which encourages the development of national laws that favour public transportation and indirectly promotes the reduction of cars in cities through CSOs. Similar
Conclusions
One of the strategies to deal with unsustainable patterns of consumption is by providing systems for shared use with lower environmental impacts. Examples of such systems are available, but the majority of them have a rather low profile in society. It is therefore important to investigate factors that facilitate or hinder broader acceptance of such sustainable consumption alternatives. The goal of the study was to identify critical factors that affect the level of embodiment of alternative
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the reviewers of the earlier versions of this paper for extremely helpful comments and useful suggestions.
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2022, Resources, Conservation and RecyclingCitation Excerpt :In addition, unsuitable regulatory frameworks for the use of infrastructure were also reported in studies about mobility or energy services (Müller and Welpe, 2018), housing (Brauckmann, 2017), and industrial operations (Pagoropoulos et al., 2017a). Ultimately, it seems that conflicts between prevailing regulatory, political, and technical frameworks in favor of protecting traditional industries create barriers to entry for new ABC offerings; furthermore, these protections also conflict with the goals of sustainable consumption (Mont, 2004a; Hong and Lee, 2018; Paik et al., 2018). At the same time, SOC4 underlines the necessity to work with social norms related to a sustainable consumption model, suggesting that ABC is met with resistance in the way societal values are organized around hyper-consumption, planned obsolescence, and corporate propaganda as well as lobbying (Barnes and Mattsson, 2016), which contradict the goals of sustainable consumption (Mont, 2004a; Barnes and Mattsson, 2016).