Citizen-Consumers and Evolution

Reducing Environmental Harm through Our Social Motivation

Mikael Klintman

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781137276803
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Environmental Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

This book develops a groundbreaking, novel approach to examining ethical consumer behaviour from the perspective of evolutionary theory, illustrating the deeply rooted potentials and limits within society for reducing environmental harm.

1

Introduction

Abstract: Citizen-consumers and motivation challenges to reduce environmental harm are introduced. An approach that takes motivation seriously, the chapter holds we must take into account its evolutionary basis. The ecological and the material motivation approaches are presented. Both ignore motivation that is evolutionarily rooted in social motivation.

Klintman, Mikael. Citizen-Consumers and Evolution: Reducing Environmental Harm through Our Social Motivation. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013. DOI: 10.1057/9781137276803.

Hope is as stubborn as ever. Despite daily catastrophes in the media – effects of human-made and natural environmental disaster, social inequality, and unfair economic priorities – loud exclamations of hope are constantly heard. In the magazine Wired, the renaissance man and well-known film director David Lynch proclaims a new level of enlightenment as the recipe for a better world:

Now, if you heighten [consciousness] in the individual, it leads to enlightenment – that’s super-consciousness. If you heighten that in the world, it brings a higher collective consciousness. (David Lynch, in Wired [12], 2011)

Academic social thinkers call for different versions of cosmopolitanism. The sociologist Ulrich Beck, for instance, arguing for an ‘analytical-empirical cosmopolitization’, suggests that the world is moving towards a single community with shared morality, and with a global respect for a number of ‘othernesses’ [my term] concerning nature and culture. Beck describes cosmopolitization as follows:

The most interesting thing is the fact that the reception of such media reporting creates an awareness that strangers in distant places are following the same events with the same fears and worries as oneself. Strangers become neighbors!. (Beck, 2011, p. 1350)

No longer can we regard them as poor strangers, inviting us to be good and compassionate. Instead we must now understand them as partners in a common cause: both ‘us’ and ‘them’ tied together in the interests of survival, in the challenge of mastering global risks. (Beck, 2011, p. 1357)

Such high and almost spiritual hopes (albeit with dark overtones) are translated by governmental and non-governmental organizations from a structural orientation into calls at the level of agency, requiring and ‘nudging’ citizen-consumers to take a large share of the responsibility. People in many societies are confronted with imperatives that they should ‘shop ethically’, ‘care for the environment’, and ‘think glocally’. Media, public agencies, NGOs, and ‘progressive’ companies issue these messages and instructions about virtually all sectors of society such as energy, food, travel, textiles, and furniture. Yet, despite very loud environmental concerns, largely among a growing middle and upper middle class in the richer countries (Eurobarometer, 2011), and despite the increased prevalence of eco-products and eco-services marked with various eco-labels and certificates, these messages and initiatives have had less than sufficiently positive results in several sectors during the last few decades (Devinney, Auger, & Eckhardt, 2010). It is still the lower socio-economic classes in the South and North that make the substantial ‘environmental efforts’, because of their low levels of resource use. Whereas figures indicate that, for instance, CO₂ emissions have been slightly reduced in the North and increased in some countries in the South (OECD, 2011), this is not least in result of demands of consumer products produced in the South and exported to, as well as consumed in, the North. Still, consumer patterns are changing rapidly in the South, because of growing segments with increased economic resources. In its prognosis for the period 2011 to 2035, the International Energy Agency (IEA) assumes a ‘world demand growth for all energy sources’, and that ‘the prospects for oil and gas demand hinge to a large degree on future policy decisions’, such as subsidies directed at renewable energy (IEA, 2011, pp. 1–3). Similar prognoses and prescriptions could plausibly be made concerning several other natural resources and emission challenges.

Unless we subscribe to a fatalist worldview, a major part of these issues – and the potential for changing the trends – can be boiled down to human motivation, whether that of politicians, policy makers, industrial actors, NGOs, or citizen-consumers. This book focuses on the latter, albeit in close relation to the former groups.

1.1Re-inviting the concept of motivation

To gain a thorough understanding of the gaps between what many people envision, what we claim to be important in life, and what we actually do and support, this book tries to revive the term motivation in the broader context of social sciences. In line with its Latin root, movere (to move), Reeve has defined motivation as ‘those processes that give behaviour its energy and direction’ (Reeve, 2005, p. 39).

Talk in terms of motivation has a very particular sound to some people, connoting an individual psychological, neo-classical economic, and/or traditional rational-choice approach, where the individual is perceived as motivated predominantly by maximizing economic utilities and minimizing deprivations of such utilities. Moreover, these motivations are typically conceived as fully conscious, in this neo-classical economic approach that social scientists often associate with the term motivation (Thaler & Sunstein, 2008).¹ However, as Brody convincingly pointed out decades ago, most social scientific approaches have an implicit notion or theory of motivation (Brody, 1983). Yet, scholars rarely dare to explicate it in motivational terms, perhaps from fear of seeming to adopt a traditional rational-choice perspective with excessive belief in full consumer liberty to consciously maximize ‘utilities’ with too limited an understanding of the role of institutions, norms, and rules as forces reducing such liberty (Turner, 1987). Alternatively, for a sociologist to talk in terms of motivation might give the impression of being unknowingly eclectic. Nevertheless, in the context of this book, I find motivation is the best term to refer to the root values and driving forces of citizen-consumers, However, this also requires a very clear use of the term in every chapter.

From the dawn of late modern environmental concern to the present day, two broad scholarly approaches have been dominant in analysing the societal challenges and opportunities for citizen-consumers. They are not necessarily tied to specific disciplines or policy areas, but can be found in writing, debates, and decision making within parts of several disciplines and policy areas. In fact, many, if not most, of us who are dedicated to social examination of environmental issues have at least made implications that fall under one or both of these approaches. The first one, which I call the ecological motivation approach,² understands reduced ecological harm as an actual or potential primary value among groups of, or among most, citizen-consumers. The second one, here called the material motivation approach, conceives incessant material accumulation as an – actually or potentially – primary value among citizen-consumers. The diagnosis of the ecological motivation approach is typically that people do not fully understand the gravity of global environmental problems and how these problems are tied to political and daily choices of citizen-consumers themselves. A major remedy is for people to become better informed about the urgency of environmental problems and about how environmentally harmful habits could be altered (Dietz & Stern, 2002; Nolan, 2010). The diagnosis of the material motivation approach is that the market economy is not yet adapted to taking ‘negative externalities’ into account (Steg & Vlek, 2009). According to this approach – unless it favours an invisible hand – the market should be adjusted so that citizen-consumers are given (mainly economic) incentives to reduce the damage they do and disincentives to increase such damage (Atkinson, 2009; Attari et al., 2009; The Economist, 2009). Interestingly, although the ecological and material approaches to environmental problems have often been treated as opposites, they have considerable similarities. Their faith in the potential of citizen-consumers – through reliable knowledge authorities – acting consciously, strategically, and predictably unites the two perspectives, although the ecological motivation perspective sees reduced ecological harm as a possible primary value, whereas the economic one perceives reduced ecological harm as a possible means to satisfy what they believe to be the primary value of material accumulation.

1.2Taking social motivation seriously

Despite seeming clear-cut, the ecological and material motivation approaches are often combined and mixed in academic work as well as in policy practice. Ecological motivation proponents, and some subscribers to the material motivation approach, combine the preceding prescriptions with calls for strengthened environmental regulation. Moreover, they are often mixed with a third dimension: the social dimension. When these dimensions are mixed, social scientific research on citizen-consumers is typically of the blank-slate character, whereby any aspect of culture is seen as equally significant to people’s motivations and practices; in such research, eclectic holism is the principle from which conclusions are drawn. This is manifest in the common research finding that citizen-consumers, consumption, and green concern are ‘complex’ (Peattie, 2010, p. 195). This complexity may be described by listing everything that matters. The renowned environmental social psychologist Stern’ s assessment of factors behind environmentally significant behaviour is the following:

1. ‘Attitudinal factors, including norms, beliefs, and values’, related to the environment, yet also non-attitudinal factors, for instance ‘about frugality, luxury, waste, or the importance of spending time with family’.; 2. contextual forces – interpersonal influences, community expectations, advertising, governmental regulation, monetary incentives and costs, physical difficulty by technology or built environment; 3. personal capabilities (e.g., skills, knowledge, and resources of individuals and the organisations in which they may participate.; and 4. habit or routine. (Stern, 2000, p. 416–417)

This is a truly eclectic, holistic picture. Still, although a broad picture might be a useful starting point, this book maintains that studies ending with claims of complexity have not gone very far beyond our everyday, commonsensical view of the world. The reader is left wondering if everything really matters to an equal degree, and if nothing constitutes the basis for something else within this complexity. It is the task of scholars to analyse – theoretically and empirically – to what extent certain factors may be more fundamental, or in other ways more important, than others; in this case, as drivers towards taking environmental considerations in daily life or not.

The most serious problem with the eclectic pictures of citizen-consumer motivation is their treatment of the social dimension as a supplement. Thus, it is fair to call them manifestations of a weak social motivation approach. ‘We should not forget the social’ is often heard among both researchers and policy practitioners involved in sustainability projects. The social becomes an additional factor, which may spice up projects of citizen-consumers and environmental concern (although it is assumed that the social dimension never reaches the same degree of importance as monetary saving or environmental morality). To a large extent dimension has so far been studied on equal terms with a wide range of factors: economic, practical, ‘moral’, and so forth. The underlying assumption when the social is treated as supplementary is typically that citizen-consumers (i.e., human beings) are blank slates on which any motivation may be equally strong; and why not add the social aspects to energy projects in order to make them more motivating for the participants? Although the previously mentioned ‘remedies’ are likely to continue to play a crucial part in environmental policy making, this book questions these suggested diagnoses and remedies. Consequently, this book is intended to provide a substantial challenge to the main accounts of scholarly works as well as policy practice concerning the ‘green’ and ‘ethical’ potential of citizen-consumers.

It is important to stress that extensive research has examined, highlighted, and theorized social parameters and their roles for people to change their daily practices. Social identity theory, for instance, contends an interplay between solidarity and competition, as a factor important to behaviour (Stets & Burke, 2000). With the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability Model, Ölander and Thøgersen (1995) portray the significance of (socially based) opportunity for practices such as structural and infrastructural opportunities. In their Theory of Reasoned Action, and subsequently in their Theory of Planned Behaviour, Ajzen & Fishbein include what they call ‘the subjective norm’ that refers to what people think that others will think about a certain action that they perform (1980). All these theories have been used as frameworks in studies of environmental behaviour. It is beyond the objective of this book to review this rich literature (for reviews, see Bechtel & Churchman, 2002). The scope of this book is narrower: to develop a social motivation approach informed by evolutionary theory and to apply this approach to the roles of citizen-consumers in light of environmental harm.

The main argument of the book stems from a fundamental irony: The social science model previously sketched, with its blank-slate ontology and frequent treatment of the social as a supplement, has been labelled The Standard Social Science Model (SSSM; a term originally used by Barkow, Cosmides, & Tooby, 1992, p. 23). I contend that this model implies and entails a shallow understanding and treatment of the social dimension as weak. A much more thorough understanding and strengthening of the social dimension can be achieved, however, by allowing research within SSSM to be influenced by disciplines that have typically been perceived as its main enemy (a perception that has only partially been untrue): evolutionary theory on human nature, a perspective practised by certain schools of anthropology (Bentley, Earls, & O’Brien, 2011); the interface between evolutionary psychology, cognitive science, and neuropsychology (Pinker, 2009; Ploeger, 2010; Wright, 1995); and so forth. This book holds that it is necessary to make use of – and to go beyond – ‘Darwin-free’ social sciences to arrive at a new and more fundamental understanding of why the middle and upper classes and society’s institutions, despite all the verbal concerns, knowledge, and economic resources, do not do more, and how the North can take more responsibility to reduce environmental harm. Although scholarly work conducted on the basis of SSSM may be highly valuable for its rich descriptions and analyses of the social, cultural, and organizational preconditions for citizen-consumers to be involved in environmental and social issues, the social sciences need to be made compatible with evolutionary theory. The latter provides well-founded knowledge about human and societal motivations, which in turn rest on biological driving forces without which social organization would be impossible.

It should be noted that there is nothing new about trying to marry sociologically oriented research with evolutionary theory (leaving aside the nightmare attempts labelled social Darwinism some hundred years ago; for an overview see Leonard, 2009), although new and serious attempts have so far been quite marginal (Freese, Li, & Wade, 2003; Ploeger, 2010). What is new is this book’s attempt to make environmentally oriented social sciences focus on how people’s roles as citizens and consumers, as environmental saviours or destroyers, can be informed by evolutionary theory of human nature. Moreover, this book is written with the ambition of elaborating on, and providing certain answers to, the reverse issue, which has rarely been given due attention. This issue concerns what research within the Standard Social Science Model may contribute with, contributions that evolutionary scholarship has so far been unable to offer. As we shall see, the evolutionary perspective in itself typically leaves several wide knowledge gaps that ‘conventional’ social sciences with their focus on citizen-consumers are better suited to fill.

I argue that the intellectual ‘detour’ (via a brief search for human nature) turns out to entail a renewed acknowledgement of the high significance and further potential of the social sciences – albeit somewhat revised – for analysing preconditions for reduced environmental harm in our roles as citizen-consumers. Drawing upon social scientific research on consumption and environment, and informing it with an evolutionary outlook may, in my view, make analyses at least slightly less all-embracing (avoiding claims that economy, technology, law, culture, s...

Table of contents

• Cover
• HalfTitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustration
• Acknowledgements
• 1  Introduction
• 2  Three Approaches
• 3  Apollonian and Dionysian Trust
• 4  Rebound Effects and Spillovers
• 5  Single Policy and Planning Issues
• 6  Wider Societal Change
• 7  Conclusions and Discussion
• References
• Index