Anti‐consumption as part of living a sustainable lifestyle: daily practices, contextual motivations and subjective values

Abstract

This research examines anti-consumption practices, motivations and values within attempts to live a more sustainable lifestyle. Sixteen women were interviewed and from their narratives, anti-consumption for sustainability was found to be practiced via acts of rejection, reduction and reuse. In addition, practices of anti-consumption for sustainability are constructed through the collaboration between the needs of the individual and the needs for environmental preservation. This perspective moves sustainable consumption away from a rational information processing and environmentally motivated choice to incorporate various subjective and individualistic needs and values. Hence, the challenge for sustainable marketers is to position sustainable practices along side self interested notions such as independence, beauty, quality or value for money.

No Through Road: A Critical Examination of Researcher Assumptions and Approaches to Researching Sustainability

“…In order to move away from this tion research which is concerned with (inconsistent) streams of activities set within shared household contexts. D of signalling the dynamic and incomplete nature of change and also highlights the notion of process rather than implicitly emphasising the role of N (Black & Cherrier, 2010) are even more neutral, and we suggest therefore useful, in this respect.…”

Caring and Conflicted: Mothers’ Ethical Judgments about Consumption

“…In addition, some apparently ethical choices may conflict with women's lifestyles, values and identities (Black, 2009). Within ethical-consumption literature such tensions are often treated as conflicts either between an ethical position and a pragmatic concern for practicality (Carey et al, 2008) or between the behavioural norms of competing identities (Black and Cherrier, 2010;Cherrier et al, 2011). Given that a mother's care for her infant can "defensibly be at the forefront of a person's moral concerns" (Held, 2006: p. 10), our study considers whether these tensions are more appropriately conceptualised as moral dilemmas.…”

Cold Comfort? Reconceiving the Practices of Bathing in British Self-Build Eco-Homes

“…The works of Black and Cherrier (2010), Vannini and Taggart (2013), and Lane and Gorman-Murray (2011) signals a shift toward understanding the motivations and desires of those who are already "green." This article extends this work by explicitly extending social practice theory into the realm of deep green sustainable practices.…”