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2
Toward a Working Definition of
Consumption for Environmental
Research and Policy
Paul C. Stern
The concept of "environmental impacts of consumption" is rooted
partly in environmental high politics. These roots can be discerned in a
1994 Presidential Decision Directive that first mobilized the U.S. govern-
ment to pay attention to consumption as an environmental issue. The
directive was issued in preparation for the International Conference on
Population and Development that would be held in Cairo that October, at
which it was widely expected that any U.S. initiative on controlling popu-
lation growth would be met by criticism directed at American levels of
consumption. The directive stated that the United States and other devel-
oped countries must maintain an awareness of their disproportionate
impacts on the global environment through consumption patterns that
are at several times the level of developing countries. To effectively
achieve the goal of marshalling an international response to population
growth trends, it said that the United States must also demonstrate lead-
ership by example in addressing the implications of these consumption
patterns, with an aim toward reducing the negative global environmental
impacts of consumption of goods and services in the United States. The
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.), in coordination with the
Departments of Energy and Transportation and other appropriate agen-
cies, was directed to develop a statement articulating U.S. strategies for
reducing such negative impacts. The directive went on to give the E.P.A.
responsibility for developing a research agenda to guide future policy in
this area.
In this political usage, "environmental impacts of consumption" ap
12
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TOWARD A WORKING DEFINITION OF CONSUMPTION
13
pears to refer to everything people do, aside from increasing their num-
bers, that may harm the environment. This usage especially emphasizes
what people in rich countries do. Treating the subject scientifically, how-
ever, requires a more precise definition of "consumption" that is accept-
able across disciplines and is useful for analyzing the environmental im-
pacts of human choices and actions. I discuss some specialized
disciplinary meanings of consumption, the inadequate definition implicit
in much recent discourse on the subject, and finally a working definition
that I tentatively propose for use in environmental research and policy.
SPECIALISTS' MEANINGS OF CONSUMPTION
Consumption has fairly precise meanings in several scientific com-
munities that are likely to address the "global environmental impacts of
consumption." These meanings are in common use in their respective
disciplines, whose adherents often have them in mind when discussing
the environmental impacts of consumption. Unfortunately, none of these
disciplinary meanings corresponds to the one in the phrase. A good way
to begin to clarify thinking is to state these definitions, because they differ
from what "consumption" in the quoted phrase seems to mean.
The Physicists' Meaning
According to the First Law of Thermodynamics, consumption is im-
possible: Matter/energy can be neither produced nor consumed. So for
physicists, consumption must be translated as transformations of matter/
energy. According to the Second Law, such transformations increase
entropy, and this increase in entropy, to the extent that it takes the form of
pollution or of a decrease in the usefulness of the transformed resource, is
part of what is meant by "environmental impacts of consumption."
The Economists' Meaning
Economists define consumption as part of total economic activity: it
is total spending on consumer goods and services (e.g., Samuelson and
Nordhaus, 1989:969~. The rest of economic activity consists of investment
in capital goods. Economists also distinguish the consumption of goods
and services from their production and distribution. In neither of these
senses does the economists' usage conform to what is meant in the phrase
"environmental impacts of consumption." Investment has environmen-
tal impacts just the way the purchase of consumer goods and services
does. In fact, the activities may be physically identical, as when a truck or
a computer is produced and purchased either for use as capital equip
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ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
ment in a firm or as a consumer good. And in economists' terms, the
environmental impacts of "consumption" result from production and dis-
tribution as well as from economic consumption. All three processes
have environmentally significant impacts, and production and distribu-
tion may be more environmentally disruptive than consumption. Cer-
tainly, production processes such as mining and agricultural tillage are
responsible for significant pollution problems, and also significantly de-
grade natural resources (in more precise economic terms, they make re-
sources increasingly costly to transform for productive purposes). The
economists' definition of consumption leads many economists to con-
sider it analytically inappropriate to speak of "environmental impacts of
consumption" because this phrasing artificially extracts consumption
from the system of activities of which it is a part. These economists might
prefer to translate the environmental impact of "consumption" as the
environmental impact of economic activity. This formulation reflects the
systemic unity of economies and also suggests that there may be differen-
tial impacts of different kinds of economic activity. For example, the
impact of the average dollar invested may be different from that of the
average dollar spent on consumer goods and services; different invest-
ments may have different impacts; spending on goods may have a differ-
ent impact from spending on services, and so forth.
Confusion sometimes arises when people use economic statistics,
which apply the economic definition of consumption, to analyze the envi-
ronmental effects of "consumption." They may, for example, treat an
increase in consumer spending as if it automatically indicates a propor-
tional increase in environmental impact. This may or may not be so,
depending on what changes in the size and types of economic consump-
tion account for the increased spending.
The Ecologists' Meaning
To ecologists, green plants are (primary) producers, and humans and
other animals are consumers. (Humans also "consume" minerals.) Ecolo-
gists define production, or net primary productivity (NPP), in terms of
photosynthesis: "NPP is the amount of energy left after subtracting the
respiration of primary producers (mostly plants) from the total amount of
energy (mostly solar) that is fixed biologically" (Vitousek et al., 1986:368~.
In this meaning, any organism that obtains its energy by eating is a con-
sumer; human consumption corresponds to what humanity does with the
estimated 40 percent of global terrestrial NPP that we "appropriate"
(Vitousek et al., 1986~. It is not obvious, however, that the 40 percent
estimate is a valid measure of the global environmental impact of human
consumption, because human appropriation of primary productivity is
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TOWARD A WORKING DEFINITION OF CONSUMPTION
15
not simply an ecological negative. Humanity transforms ecosystems, sub-
stituting species that seem to meet our needs for those that do not. In the
process, some species become more prevalent, and in some cases, produc-
tivity increases. For example, agriculture adds nutrients to the soil and
provides additional habitat for alfalfa weevils, honeybees, aphids, and
the like, and for their predators and diseases. So the link between human
consumption of global NPP and the "environmental impacts of consump-
tion" is not 1:1. The two usages are not equivalent, and their relationship
is yet to be determined.
Meanings in Sociology
"Consumption" also has sociological meanings, not precisely defined,
that are reflected in terms like "consumerism" and "conspicuous con-
sumption." In this usage, "consumption" connotes what individuals and
households do when they use their incomes to increase social status
through certain kinds of purchases (see, e.g., Veblen, 1899; Campbell,
1987; Scitovsky, 1992; Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy, 1995~.
Consumption in this sense is not related in any straightforward way to
environmental impact, as can be seen by looking at what may be included
in conspicuous consumption. In some American subcultures, one can
increase status by building an all-solar house that conspicuously con-
sumes money (for architectural design, solar panels, and so forth) but that
may reduce environmental impact if it decreases fossil and nuclear en-
ergy consumption enough to compensate for the additional materials in
the house. Similarly, a late-model luxury car may cost more money,
provide more status, and yet consume less fuel and steel than an old
pickup truck. The sociological definitions have different referents from
those implied in the phrase "environmental impacts of consumption"
because they do not distinguish environmentally benign from environ-
mentally destructive consumption. It is analytically misleading to pre-
sume that manifestations of consumerism are necessarily destructive
to the environment. The recent phenomenon of "green consumerism,"
which encompasses choices that are, or are believed to be, environmen-
tally beneficial, illustrates the point.
A POPULAR BUT INADEQUATE DEFINITION
As a step toward a working definition of consumption, it may help
to explicate a definition that is implicit in much popular discussion of
consumption and the environment, that implies an interesting research
agenda, but that ultimately provides an incomplete and misleading basis
for analyzing the issue. I do not advocate accepting this definition.
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ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
Rather, I present it because it embodies some of the confusions that are
common in many recent discussions of consumption and the environ-
ment.
The definition can be distilled from some images that commonly ap-
pear in discourse about U.S. consumption and the environment: dumps
filled with disposable products, plastics, and consumer packaging waste;
freeways clogged with traffic that pollutes the air but barely moves; auto-
mobiles and appliances junked when they might have been repaired;
tracts of large, single-family homes with few occupants, but centrally air
conditioned and with heated or cooled swimming pools; advertisements
for products that no one seemed to want a few years ago but that soon
everyone will "need"; air-conditioned shopping malls surrounded by
acres of asphalt; and trash-lined streets and highways. In some of these
images, consumers appear as acquiring and disposing of things they want
but do not necessarily need; in others, they are running on a treadmill,
sacrificing time with their families and friends to work increasingly long
hours for money to buy things they feel they need but do not really want.
The images portray excesses of resource use, waste, and material acquisi-
tiveness and lives that are driven by, but ultimately unfulfilled by, mate-
rial things. These images connote what participants in a recent U.S. study
most often referred to as "materialism" a set of values that places mate-
rial abundance ahead of all else (Harwood Group, 1995~.
It should not go without saying that these images embody a norma-
tive critique of consumerist culture, based on claims that it is destructive
environmentally, and in some versions of the critique, destructive socially
and spiritually as well (see, e.g., Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy,
1995~. Many writers on consumption and the environment believe there
is too much consumption in the United States and that people should want
(or should be influenced) to consume less. Interestingly, a substantial
minority of Americans say they would like to earn and consume less,
especially if doing so would free more time for family life and other
nonmaterialist pursuits (e.g., Schor, 1991; Harwood Group, 1995~.
But leaving aside normative content, what does consumption mean
in this discourse? The implicit definition might be stated this way: Con-
sumption consists of the purchase decisions of households and what they do with
their purchases. Its environmental impacts are the transformations of materials
and energy that ultimately resullfrom these activities. This definition embod-
ies some assumptions about what causes the "environmental impact of
consumption" each of them heuristically useful to a point, but analyti-
cally flawed and implies a research agenda. I first state the assumptions
and then assess them and their research implications.
Assumption 1: Individuals and households are the actors most responsible
for the environmental impacts of consumption. This assumption points to the
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17
importance of research on individual and household behavior, particu-
larly consumer behavior. It draws attention away from the activities of
firms and governments, except as their activities serve or induce consum-
ers' desires.
Assumption 2: Affluence, or more specifically, affluence U.S. style, is the
pattern of living through which households cause environmental impacts. This
assumption implies that research should focus on the extent to which
households spend (rather than save) their incomes and on their patterns
of spending, particularly the extent to which spending is on materials-
and energy-intensive products and services. It also suggests research on
consumer decisions to forego earning (and therefore consuming) in favor
of other uses of their time.
Assumption 3: The driving forces of anthropogenic environmental change,
other than population growth, are economic growth and a set offorces acting on
consumer "preferences." This assumption underlines the importance of
research on the causes of growth in consumers' incomes. It also directs
attention to such forces as individuals' values and worldviews as they
concern material goods, social norms and interpersonal influences re-
garding material possessions, the socialization of materialist values or
"consumer culture," and market-related forces affecting consumer behav-
ior, including pricing and advertising of materials- and energy-intensive
products. This assumption would direct economists toward further study
of how income drives consumption. Psychologists would study factors
within individuals, such as values, attitudes, knowledge, and purport-
edly fundamental human tendencies such as selfishness and the desire for
status. Sociologists would study forces such as advertising, status com-
petition, and the ideology of mastery over nature that came to ascendance
in Western societies with the rise of capitalism.
Assumption 4: The environmental impacts of consumption are more or less
the samefor all kinds of consumption. This assumption, unreasonable when
made explicit, in fact underlies some popular writing on consumption
and the environment. Those who define consumption in ways like the
above often fail to distinguish between consumption that does and does
not leave the transformed materials available for reuse (e.g., lead in auto-
motive batteries vs. lead in paint) or between consumption of things of
equal price that differ in the environmental consequences of producing
and using them.
This definition of consumption in terms of household behavior pro-
vides a useful heuristic as far as it goes because it points to a coherent and
pertinent set of empirical questions: What causes household income to
increase? What drives rates of saving? What determines the energy- and
materials-intensiveness of household spending and the use of household
technologies? What policies can induce households to use their incomes
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ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
in more environmentally benign ways? There is room for all the social
and behavioral sciences and for specialists in technology to do useful
work on these questions. Moreover, answers to them would be valuable
for modeling environmental change and perhaps for stopping or slowing
undesirable change.
Nevertheless, the research agenda does not do justice to the issue of
"environmental impacts of consumption," and the assumptions are ana-
lytically flawed. The first assumption, that most consumption is directly
caused by individuals and households, is simply incorrect for the United
States and other affluent countries. The vast majority of energy use,
releases of water and air pollutants, and many other environmentally
destructive activities in the United States results directly from organiza-
tional behavior rather than individual behavior specifically, from the
acts of corporations and governments (Gardner and Stern, 1996; Allen,
Chapter 3~. The most environmentally significant choices are not those
that householders make, such as to purchase and then use consumer
technologies, but the purchase and use choices of organizations, and or-
ganizational choices about how technologies that affect the environment
are designed, produced, distributed, and marketed. To presume that
consumers are entirely responsible for the environmental impacts of con-
sumption is to overlook most of the phenomenon.
One might argue that household behavior is the ultimate driver be-
cause of consumer sovereignty, but that effect is indirect and incomplete.
Most people normally have weak preferences with regard to the technol-
ogy used to produce what they purchase. Also, the environmental impact
of production processes is typically hidden from consumers when they
make choices. It would therefore be an analytical mistake to overlook
organizational decisions that directly affect the energy- and materials-
intensity of the economy and do so somewhat independently of con-
sumer choice, for example, by determining which products are available
for purchase or which industrial processes are employed to manufacture
them. It might also be a practical mistake, if the goal is to reduce environ-
mental impact. Systematic campaigns to help consumers understand the
environmental impacts of production processes may be effective. The
potential of such an approach in this area is suggested by the growing
demand in the United States for "organic" food products, which are mar-
keted as environmentally superior.
The second assumption, that U.S.-style affluence is the source of envi-
ronmental degradation, is better treated as a hypothesis to be analyzed
than a conclusion. The focus on affluence suggests that researchers should
classify patterns of living at different income levels styles of affluence,
frugality, poverty, and so forth and compare their environmental ef-
fects. It is particularly important to learn how these patterns or styles are
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19
shaped by people's social, economic, and geographic contexts; how they
change; and whether they can be materially influenced by acts of indi-
vidual will or by policy. This assumption also suggests a sharp distinc-
tion between spending and saving that may not, in fact, be environmen-
tally significant. Whether consumer saving is better for the environment
than consumer spending is an empirical question, the answer to which
depends on what kinds of investments are made by those who hold the
savings. A focus on consumer spending thus distracts attention from the
environmental impacts of investment, which are intimately tied to those
of economic consumption.
The third assumption, about driving forces, is flawed because it fo-
cuses on only a subset of the relevant driving forces of anthropogenic
environmental change. Most of the important driving forces fit into five
categories: population growth, economic growth, technological change,
political-economic institutions, and attitudes and beliefs (National Re-
search Council, 1992~. By omitting technology and institutions and the
forces that shape them in turn, the third assumption rules out important
lines of investigation. These neglected driving forces profoundly affect
human transformations of materials and energy, and altering them pro-
vides ways of controlling the environmental impacts of human activity.
Thus, the household-based definition of consumption is not only in-
adequate for understanding but also inappropriate in policy terms: It
unnecessarily narrows vision concerning the strategies available for
changing consumption's environmental impacts. Such a definition fo-
cuses attention on households and on affluence, suggesting that to solve
environmental problems, individuals and households must spend (and
perhaps earn) less. Aside from the fact that this conclusion is unlikely to
lead to acceptable policy options, it has major substantive problems.
One is that the conclusion may be overly pessimistic. There are effec-
tive policy strategies that do not directly target individuals and that, often
by focusing on technology and institutions, accomplish desired goals
more effectively and in more acceptable ways. For example, improving
emissions control technology in automobiles, a policy directed mainly at
manufacturers, did more to reduce urban air pollution than any politi-
cally practicable policy directed at households could have done. A
broader definition of consumption might help identify such strategies
and allow analysis of how much they can accomplish.
Another problem is that the focus on directly changing household
behavior suggests a panoply of interventions that do not work well. Some
of them provoke public resistance, like President Carter's call in 1979 to
lower home heating levels in winter. Some interventions are too limited
in scope because households are not the main cause of the targeted envi-
ronmental problems. And others are likely to fail because household
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ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
behavior is multiply determined and the interventions target only a single
element of it, such as consumerist values or a presumed lack of informa-
tion on how to cut back. Changing consumer behavior directly is a viable
policy strategy, but success depends on addressing the complexities of
environmentally relevant household behavior and usually requires ad-
dressing several barriers to change simultaneously (Gardner and Stern,
1996).
TOWARD A WORKING DEFINITION OF CONSUMPTION
At this stage of development of research on the environmental im-
pacts of consumption, a working definition of consumption should not
foreclose research on significant actors, major driving forces, their interre-
lationships, or the various possible ways to control consumption's im-
pacts. I propose the following definition for consideration: Consumption
consists of human and human-induced transformations of materials and energy.
Consumption is environmentally important to the extent that it makes materials
or energy less available for future use, moves a biophysical system toward a
different state or, through its effects on those systems, threatens human health,
welfare, or other things people valued One might say that this is a definition
of environmental consumption, as distinct from, for instance, economic con-
sumption. A few points that are implicit in this definition should be
stated explicitly:
(1) Consumption in this sense is not solely a social or economic
activity but a human-environment transaction. Its causes (driving forces)
are largely economic and social, at least in advanced societies, but its
effects are biophysical. The study of consumption therefore lies at the
1When consumption makes materials and energy less available for future use, it may
affect the environment in various, sometimes contradictory, ways. First there is a straight-
forward resource-depletion effect resulting from the fact that resources use requires energy
and produces waste. Because easily accessible resources tend to be exploited first, each
additional unit of the same resource tends to take more energy to extract and to produce
more waste. Consumption of materials and energy can have some countervailing effects as
well. For instance, a resource (e.g., natural gas) may be used in increasing amounts as a
substitute for a more environmentally damaging one (e.g., oil or coal), resulting in a net
environmental improvement. Also, resource depletion with its increasing economic and
environmental costs may spur the development and adoption of more environmentally
benign substitutes (e.g., passive solar building design), with the result that short-term envi-
ronmental damage leads to long-term improvement. Because of these countervailing ef-
fects, the net long-term environmental effect of materials and energy consumption is not
easily determined: careful empirical analysis is required that looks at the larger social and
economic system in which resource use is embedded. I am indebted to Joel Darmstadter
for emphasizing these complexities.
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TOWARD A WORKING DEFINITION OF CONSUMPTION
21
interface of the social and natural sciences, and seems to require their
collaboration.
(2) Consumption is defined by biophysical categories such as coal
and carbon dioxide, forests and croplands, rather than by social catego-
ries such as money or status. It follows that the appropriate units for
measuring consumption are physical and biological, rather than economic
or social (e.g., Odum, 1971; Cleveland et al., 1984; Wernick, Chapter 3~.
(3) Although consumption is defined by biophysical categories, its
environmental impacts are seen through human eyes. Changes of state in
biophysical systems are all environmental consequences, but not all are
necessarily negative from human perspectives. The connection from en-
vironmental "change" to environmental "disruption" or "harm" is medi-
ated by human values, and individuals may disagree about whether a
particular environmental effect of consumption is one to be avoided.
(4) Consumer behavior is environmentally significant consumption
according to this definition only to the extent that it has environmental
effects. Thus, consumer behavior may be more or less environmentally
consumptive, and some of it comes close to not consuming at all. The
purchase of automotive fuel is highly consumptive; by contrast, the pur-
chase of computer software and time on the Internet are among the least
consumptive of consumer activities, especially on a per-dollar basis. Simi-
larly, producers' economic activity may be highly consumptive, or it may
not (e.g., National Research Council, 1994~. Waste clean-up is undertaken
to reduce the environmental impact of other economic activity, and some
activities of economic producers can even reduce net consumption in the
environmental sense. This can happen when a firm finds ways to use its
own or another firm's wastes as an input to production: the environmen-
tal damage from waste disposal and the extraction and processing of
virgin materials decreases, and economic output increases.
(5) "Consumption" is not affected only by those who are consumers
in the economists' sense. Producers and distributors transform materials
and energy. Consumption is also affected by those whose actions indi-
rectly shape the purchase of consumer goods and services, for example,
by setting building codes or standards for the manufacture of equipment.
Public officials are also responsible for large amounts of environmental
consumption. Perhaps the most extensive public consumption is by mili-
tary organizations, which use large amounts of fuel, metals, explosives,
and the like and engage in large-scale transformation of ecosystems, espe-
cially in wartime. The actions of military and civilian public officials can
have major environmental effects. For instance, by changing their pur-
chasing practices, they can affect the environment both directly and
through their influence on the producers of what they purchase.
(6) Consumer goods are not the only things that consume resources
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ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
and have environmental impacts. Public sector activities, services, and
even investment are environmentally important consumption if they have
major environmental consequences. Activities outside the market (e.g.,
religious ritual) can also transform materials and energy.
(7) All human beings and societies, not just the affluent ones, con-
sume. The drastically different quantities and qualities of consumption
around the world are a matter for empirical investigation rather than for
polemic.
The broad definition of consumption has the advantage that it does
not foreclose the study of human choices and activities that may hold
keys to reducing the environmental impacts of human activity. The fol-
lowing list suggests some of the social phenomena that tend to be over-
looked under the narrow, popular definition of consumption but are in-
cluded in the broader one, and that may be environmentally important.
· Changes in the structure of production and work. The environmental
impact of human choices and actions can decrease without change in
households' preferences, incomes, or well-being if products are manufac-
tured in less environmentally destructive ways (e.g., encyclopedias on
line instead of on paper, fiber optic telephone lines instead of copper),
and if working conditions put less stress on the environment (telecom-
muting may be an example). What trends move the economy in these
directions? Which structural changes are environmentally beneficial?
Which policies promote or hinder these changes?
· Substitution of services for products. Most consumer purchases are
motivated by a desire for a service or function rather than for a product in
itself. People buy natural gas for heating but might get some home heat
from passive solar housing design; they buy automobiles to travel but
might get some of this service from well-designed mass transit. People
also substitute restaurant food for home cooking, a change that may or
may not, on balance, be good for the environment. What drives such
trends? What are their environmental implications?
· Changes in household composition and patterns of life. Recent socio-
demographic trends such as decreasing household size, the aging of popu-
lations, and increasing labor force participation among women of child-
bearing ages may have significant environmental implications. They affect
demand for travel, space heating and cooling, and various other con-
sumer services independently of any change in basic values or attitudes
about the environment. Even though there may be no viable policies to
change these trends, there may be ways to change their environmental
implications if their effects on consumer behavior were better understood.
· Change in nonenvironmental policies. It is commonly asserted that
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TOWARD A WORKING DEFINITION OF CONSUMPTION
23
the home mortgage tax credit and the interstate highway system have
indirectly increased U.S. energy demand and disrupted ecological sys-
tems. International trade policies have also been claimed to have envi-
ronmental impacts. To what extent are such claims accurate? What other
nonenvironmental policies shape the environmental consequences of hu-
man choices and actions, and how can such effects be estimated in ad-
vance?
These examples suggest how adopting the broad definition of con-
sumption may have significant advantages for guiding future research. A
research agenda that illuminated the above phenomena and that also
addressed the more household-focused questions about the environmen-
tal implications of income growth, consumerist ideology, personal values
and preferences, and the like would provide much of the knowledge
needed to understand and reduce the "environmental impacts of con-
sumption" in the United States and elsewhere.
However, the broad definition of consumption may not be entirely
satisfactory because under it, "environmental impacts of consumption"
seems to be a redundancy. If consumption consists of materials and
energy transformations, it automatically has environmental implications,
even if the effects are not necessarily undesirable (i.e., perceived as im-
pacts). The definition makes it necessary to speak of the "environmental
impact of human choices and actions" (rather than of consumption) as the
object of research. The relevant field of study, then, is human choices and
activities that alter the biophysical environment, especially in ways widely
considered undesirable. Many of these choices and activities are those of
wealthy individuals and households, as the narrower definition of con-
sumption presumes. But the broader definition may lead researchers in
productive directions that might be missed if research looks mainly at
"consumers."
The broad definition may also be unsatisfying to some because it fails
to point to policy goals for "reducing the negative global environmental
impact of consumption of goods and services," that is, for achieving one
of the central objectives of sustainable development. In particular, it does
not single out affluent consumers or consumerism as a source of environ-
mental problems but instead leaves their roles an open question. This
circumspection is actually an advantage for the purpose of informing
public decisions for two reasons. First, it appropriately reflects the state
of knowledge. For instance, evidence suggests that the relationship be-
tween affluence and environmental degradation is not monotonic (see,
e.g., Dietz and Rosa, Chapter 4~. A definition that presumes that con-
sumer behavior lies at the root of the environmental effects of human
activity in the richer countries begs a question that is still open and draws
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ENVIRONMENTALLY SIGNIFICANT CONSUMPTION
attention away from potentially effective strategies for addressing those
effects without restricting aggregate consumer activity.
The second rationale for a definition that does not presume the tar-
gets of policy is that choosing such targets is inherently value laden. The
definition directs research attention to human choices and actions that
change biophysical systems but leaves open the question of which changes
in which systems are most to be avoided. The definition emphasizes that
environmental changes are more or less important depending on what
people value. This formulation makes an appropriate distinction between
analytical questions about the effects of human activities on biophysical
systems and questions about the social meaning of those effects. A1-
though the definition does not imply a policy strategy for sustainable
development, it does point a way to get the understanding needed to
inform policy debates.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I express gratitude to those who offered helpful comments on an
earlier draft, particularly Thomas Dietz, Emily Matthews, Eugene Rosa,
Vernon Ruttan, Robert Socolow, lames Sweeney, and Richard Wilk.
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Gardner, G.T., and P.C. Stern
1996 Environmental Problems and Human Behavior. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
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1995 Yearning for Balance, July 1995: Views of Americans on Consumption, Materialism,
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
significant consumption
