Institutions and Agency in the Sustainability of Day-to-Day Consumption Practices: An Institutional Ethnographic Study

Abstract

Consumption is essentially an institutional action. While both the formal institutional environment and cultural embeddedness shape consumption, individuals may reciprocally amend the institutional setting through consumption choices that challenge the prevalent institutional constraints. This paper reconciles theoretical and conceptual premises from institutional and practice theory literature to study the sustainability of consumption. Using institutional ethnography as a methodological approach, the study explores the pendulum between embeddedness and agency in shaping the sustainability of day-to-day consumption of necessary goods; and further, how the external institutional environment may interact with human behaviour to contribute towards sustainability. The study finds a hierarchy of informal institutions, each level of which interacts differently with external changes. For example, sustainability is found to be more widespread the more it is embedded in practices, and this is a result of overall institutional development beyond regulation and choice editing. The results also highlight the importance of understanding unintentional sustainability in consumption practices.

How Does Socio-Technical Lock-In Cause Unsustainable Consumption in Cities? A Framework and Case Study on Mobility in Bangkok

“…These studies explicitly describe the meso scale as situated between the macro and the micro, arising from interactions between the structural and individual conditions that shape urban environments. Yet conceiving the meso scale can be problematic, since literature concedes that its boundaries with other scales are blurry (Vergragt et al, 2016;Pekkanen, 2020). Thus, to avoid conceptual ambiguities and simply but clearly distinguish between structural and individual conditions, we incorporate in our framework only two scales: macro and micro.…”

“…Infrastructure and built-environment systems include humanmade surroundings that support or provide the physical setting for human activity (Kaklauskas and Gudauskas, 2016). At the macro scale, these systems typically consist of long-lived, collectively provided, and shared buildings, structures, and infrastructure such as those supporting transportation (e.g., roads, subways, bike lanes, pedestrian networks), supply chains, telecommunications, energy provision networks, leisure (e.g., parks, public spaces), commerce (e.g., shopping centers), and industry (e.g., technology parks) (Davis et al, 2019;Pekkanen, 2020). Accounts of such macro-scale conditions impacting consumption behavior are widespread in literature-mobility behavior being no exception.…”

“…Informal institutions are the social regularities or standards, informally generated and maintained, that regulate human consumption behaviors (Coşgel, 1997). Widely described as a cause of socio-technical lock-in (Geels, 2004;Trencher et al, 2020;Duygan et al, 2021), at the macro scale this system includes collectively produced and widely shared political or societal views, beliefs, values, culture, trends, norms, and religions (Fuchs and Lorek, 2005;Biswas and Roy, 2015;Pekkanen, 2020). For example, the highly contagious fashion culture and emphasis on appearance in developed cities induces high levels of purchasing goods such as clothes, shoes, accessories, and makeup (Rudd, 1997;Rajagopal, 2011).…”

“…This relationship has also been noted when the urban population size directly influences the density of the workplace or dwelling sizes due to less land availability (Aranda-Mena et al, 2018). Also commonly discussed, shared social norms or values can pose constraints or pressures on an agent's beliefs and preferences (Foxon, 2011;Biswas and Roy, 2015;Pekkanen, 2020). These can influence the practices of individuals, households, and organizations in diverse living activities such as bathing habits (Sovacool and Griffiths, 2020), dietary preferences (Einhorn, 2020), and choice of transport mode (Belgiawan et al, 2017).…”

“…Our contribution to literature is four-fold. First, we address the need for a comprehensive framework in urban consumption literature that can account for both structure and agency in understanding the drivers of consumption behavior (Kirchberg, 2007;Pekkanen, 2020). Second, we increase the relevance and scope of scholarship on socio-technical systems and sustainability transitions, where most studies focus on innovation and technology (Unruh, 2000;Erickson et al, 2015;Seto et al, 2016;Geels, 2018).…”