Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347 – 363

www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon

ANALYSIS

Consumption and environment: some conceptual issues

Thomas Princen *
Workshop on Consumption and En6ironment, School of Natural Resources and En6ironment, The Uni6ersity of Michigan,
Ann Arbor, MI 48109 -1115, USA
Received 20 July 1998; received in revised form 1 February 1999; accepted 4 February 1999

Abstract

Consumption ranks with population and technology as a major driver of environmental change and yet researchers
and policymakers have paid it scant attention. When the topic is addressed, its conceptual foundations are either
taken as self-evident or are conflated with production, overall economic activity, materialism, maldistribution,
population or technology. The risk is to adopt the latest buzzword in the environmental debate, stretch the concept
to encompass all conceivable concerns, and forfeit any advantage — for analysis or for behavior change — that may
accrue to a new perspective on environmental problems. Consumption must be distinguished conceptually from other
approaches to environmental problems. One approach is to work within the consumption – production dichotomy,
examining not just purchasing but product use and non-purchase decisions. A second approach, one that challenges
the prevailing dichotomy and its propensity to relegate consumption to a black box, is to treat all resource use as
consuming, that is, ‘using up’, and ask what risks are entailed. Consumption can then be seen as material provisioning
where risks increase with increasing distance from the resource; as background, misconsumption, or overconsumption
depending on the social concern raised; or as a chain of decisions that compel the behaviors of restraint and resistance
among ‘producers’. Pursuing the consumption and environment topic engenders resistance among a wide range of
actors for reasons that are personal, analytic, and policy related. Nevertheless, the topic appears to have the potential
of helping analysts and others transcend conventional approaches to excess throughput. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V.
All rights reserved.

Keywords: Consumption; Environment; Policy

1. Introduction in capital cities of the Southern countries, are

On a per capita basis, humans, especially those
in the Northern industrialized countries and those
* Tel.: +1-734-647-9227; fax: + 1-734-936-2195.
E-mail address: tprincen@umich.edu (T. Princen)
consuming more resources than the planet can
regenerate, and filling waste sinks at a more rapid
rate than the planet can assimilate. Documenta-
tion for this premise is abundant (e.g. World
Commission on Environment and Development,
1987; Turner et al., 1990; OCED, 1995; Postel et

0921-8009/99/$ - see front matter © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 9 2 1 - 8 0 0 9 ( 9 9 ) 0 0 0 2 8 - 2
348 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
al., 1996; The Royal Society of London and the
United States National Academy of Sciences,
1997; World Resources Institute, 1998). The fact
that, for example, energy in some countries is
used more efficiently than 20 years ago and that
populations have stabilized in some places does
not negate the premise. Aggregate consumption of
energy continues to increase, suggesting that con-
sumption as a research topic, let alone a target of
public and private policy, is critical. Consumption
or, more precisely, overconsumption, ranks with
population and technology as a major driver of
global environmental change. Consequently, in
this article I take overconsumption as given.1
If consumption is so important from both a
research and policy perspective, what is remark-
able is the scant attention paid it by researchers
and policymakers.2 This neglect can be attributed
either to simple ignorance and the fact that im-
pacts are diffuse or distanced and thus not dis-
cernible to individuals or countries. Or the neglect
can be attributed to several prevailing beliefs. One
is that the world has seen several centuries of
ever-increasing wealth, attributed in large part to
human ingenuity. This belief suggests that, be-
cause such ingenuity has no limits, there is no
reason why the increase in wealth should have
limits. Technologies have solved problems in ways
totally unimaginable in the past. As new problems
arise and the demand for solutions increase, new
technologies will emerge, as they always have.
A second common belief is that, while work
may be onerous, consumption is pleasurable.
Consumption is good and more is always better.
1
I also take underconsumption as a given. That is, at least
a billion people have too little food, clothing, and shelter. But
in this paper I address the overconsumption of the billion or
so who consume far more than their basic needs and, it is
reasonable to assume, contribute directly or indirectly to the
underconsumption of the impoverished billion. For documen-
tation of one such pattern of connected over- and undercon-
sumption, see Mitchell (1996).
2
There are some notable exceptions in the last few years,
especially in Europe. See, e.g. the projects at Lancaster Uni-
versity (d.southerton@lancaster.ac.uk) and University of
Groningen (K.J.Noorman@fwn.rug.nl); also, projects at Indi-
ana University (wilkr@indiana.edu) and the University of
Michigan (tprincen@umich.edu).
This belief has a significant, yet rather recent,
history (Leach, 1993, pp. 231–244). For the great
bulk of human experience, the problem of greatest
concern was underproduction. When that was
largely eliminated with rapid industrialization in
the 19th century, the problem shifted. In the US
there was a widespread fear that demand was
insufficient to absorb the productive capacity of
the country. At risk were the idling of heavily
capitalized industrial plants and equipment with
large debt loads, millions of jobs, and the great-
ness of the US as a world power. In short, the
problem had become o6erproduction and, its
corollary, underconsumption. Economists, business
people, religious leaders and policy makers
worked together to stimulate consumption. By
developing new concepts (e.g. utility, insatiability)
and by emphasizing some aspects of human be-
havior (e.g. the need for acceptance and status
through material accumulation) they stimulated
consumption in part by construing material con-
sumption as the primary source of satisfaction
where more is always better. And in part, they did
so by construing consumption as a patriotic duty,
a refrain that is still heard in the US, especially
around holiday shopping time when sales are
down.3
A comprehensive research agenda on consump-
tion and environment must address these beliefs
and concepts. It must show how they may have
been perfectly sensible, indeed, civic and patriotic,
when overproduction and underconsumption
were pervasive problems and when natural re-
source abundance could be reasonably assumed.
A research agenda on overconsumption, there-
fore, must describe the biophysical trends and
categorize contemporary beliefs and practices that
perpetuate those trends. But it must also ask what
3
Consumption as a duty is also heard among financial
leaders with respect to the ‘sluggish’ Japanese economy. For
example: ‘World financial leaders have been hoping that
[Japanese housewives] will spend away Japan’s worst economic
malaise in recent history. Consumer spending accounts for
almost 60% of Japan’s gross domestic product. And because
Japan is the world’s second-largest economy, any reluctance
on the part of its consumers is felt worldwide.’ New York
Times, May 29, 1998, C1,4, ‘Shopping for a Recovery: In
Japan, Housewives Seen as Key to Reviving Economy’.
 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
distinguishes a consumption approach to en6iron-
mental problems from other approaches. It must
conceptualize the problem, separate consumption
from other problems and show how a consump-
tion perspective raises new questions — analytic
and policy oriented— and, ideally, generates new
insights into environmental and related issues.
This article deals with the latter — conceptualizing
a consumption and environment perspective.
Before proceeding, a methodological note is in
order. A research agenda can be set either by
adapting an existing framework to a newly iden-
tified social problem or it can specify the problem
first and then build concepts to fit. I opt primarily
for the latter on the assumption that few existing
frameworks of social or natural analysis are ori-
ented to the problem of excessive material
throughput of one species. What is more, as I will
show, employing an existing framework risks con-
cept stretching, fitting the problem to concepts
that were designed for a different purpose. For
example, it is tempting to appropriate consumer
theory in microeconomics as a basis of a con-
sumption and environment agenda. One would
begin by defining consumption as the purchasing
of goods and services in the marketplace. Envi-
ronmental impacts would be assessed and added
to production impacts to estimate the total mar-
ket failure of a purchased good. When the pur-
pose of conventional economic analysis is to
explain market behavior and prescribe corrections
to enhance efficiencies, this may indeed be use-
ful —that is, useful to the pre-existing objectives
of microeconomic analysis. But when the purpose
is to explain how consumption affects the envi-
ronment, how it relates to ecologically excessive
throughput, then marketplace purchasing is only
one dimension of consumption. Other dimensions
such as product use and non-market acquisition
are at least as important and yet will be down
played, if not completely ignored.
In this article, then, I distinguish the consump-
tion issue from other ‘big issues’ by first arguing
that the consumption problem is not the problem
of production, overall human or economic activ-
ity, equity, technology, or population. I then ar-
gue that, in pursuing the consumption and
environment topic, researchers must choose either
349
to adopt the production–consumption dichotomy
or to build an alternative framework. On the first
count, I note several ways to expand existing
research agendas. On the second, I posit three
means of defining consumption as ‘using up’ ma-
terial, energy, and other things of human value. I
finish by noting problems in pursuing such re-
search, showing why actors in all contexts tend to
ignore or dismiss the topic. Along the way, I
explore ways of setting boundaries on the agenda.
Boundary setting is critical because a consump-
tion agenda, like a sustainable development or a
population or a peace agenda, can easily be
stretched by analysts and practitioners alike to
encompass all imaginable concerns. The effect, as
these other agendas have experienced, is to dilute
the research, to lose focus, and, most egregiously,
to simply re-label old problems and old solutions.
Also, I should stress that my purpose is not to
extensively survey and critique existing literature,
nor is it to generate a list of topical issues for
consumption applications. Rather, my aim is to
reason out some of the fundamental conceptual
and boundary questions. My experience in pursu-
ing the topic of consumption and the environment
is that, to the extent the question is addressed,
these fundamentals are commonly skirted.
2. The consumption problem, or, the problem of
specifying the consumption problem
On the face of it, the consumption and environ-
ment problem is straightforward. Humans are
using material and energy at unprecedented levels
threatening global climate, biodiversity, soil fertil-
ity and a host of other environmental factors.
With growing affluence in many parts of the
world, the trends are only increasing. At the same
time, the consumption problem conjures up im-
ages of excess: shopping binges, gas guzzling vehi-
cles, luxury spending, energy intensive
conveniences, and throwaway products. And for
some, the environmental impacts of overcon-
sumption are yet another sign of moral decay
brought on by material self-indulgence.
So what exactly is the consumption problem? Is
it overall resource and waste sink use? If so, why
350 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
not call it just that, resource use? Or if it is
primarily a problem of economic activity why not
call it, say, economic output and its externalities?
Or might the consumption problem simply relate
to what consumers do, that is, purchase and use
goods and services? If so, humans have engaged
in mutually beneficial exchange throughout his-
tory. If it is that basic, why is such activity now a
problem? Are there some kinds of consumption
that are good, or natural or acceptable, and oth-
ers not? Or is it the overall level of consumption
and, if so, how is that different from economic
output?
There is no resolution, let alone systematic at-
tention, to such questions in the literature. The
term is taken as self-evident and is rarely defined.
These questions reveal, in fact, the considerable
ambiguity if not confusion in contemporary
usage. In this section I identify four common
usages and note their shortcomings.
One common usage is to equate consumption
with overall material or economic activity. In an
article in Science, biologist Norman Myers draws
on Stern et al. (1997) to define consumption as
‘human transformations of material and energy’
(Myers, 1997, p. 54). Such consumption is a prob-
lem when it ‘‘makes materials or energy less avail-
able for future use and... threatens human health,
welfare, or other things people value’’ (1997, p.
54). Substituting economic acti6ity or even con-
sumption’s apparent polar opposite, production,
for the word consumption in this definition would
render an equally meaningful statement. Or one
could substitute any other species for human and
get a similar result. What is more, in the human
context, this definition could just as readily be for
‘the environmental problem’. In a rejoinder to
Myers in the same article, economists Vincent and
Panayotou define consumption as that which
‘‘spans the full range of goods and services that
contribute to human well being ’’ (Myers, 1997, p.
53). A synonym for lay people and policymakers
might be an ‘economy’ or, maybe, all aspects of
an economy that people desire. On the question of
whether there is a problem of excess consumption,
Myers is diametrically opposed to Vincent and
Panayotou. But the two sets of authors share the
proclivity to take an extremely broad view of
consumption—human transformations or well
being—a view that can be stretched to include
just about anything. As transformation, consump-
tion is equivalent to all human material activity.
As well being, it is everything that is good for
humans. These usages allow biologists and others
to re-work the limits-to-growth arguments under
the rubric of consumption and economists to deny
there is a consumption problem except for full-
cost pricing.
None of these authors shows what is distinctive
about consumption, as opposed to production,
income, or overall economic or material activity.
And none show how consuming behavior leads to
environmental harm. Myers states that rich hu-
mans are consuming excessively and wastefully
and that aggregate levels are driving global warm-
ing, pollution, and other environmental problems.
Once again, substituting the term producing for
consuming makes for an equally sensible state-
ment. Vincent and Panayotou dodge the issue
entirely. To seek correlations between consump-
tion and environmental impact, they shift defini-
tions from the nebulous ‘well-being’ to monetary
income and employ the concept of private con-
sumption, ‘‘conventionally defined in national in-
come accounts [as] a narrower measure, which
encompasses only marketed (priced) goods and
services’’ (1997, p. 53). They find that there is no
inevitable tradeoff between private consumption
and environmental quality and that, in fact, many
indicators suggest that the environment improves
with private consumption. The real problem is
market failures, that is, production failures that,
once corrected, will lead to a consumption bundle
that will ‘‘automatically adjust to a more environ-
mentally friendly mix’’ (1997, p. 56). Problems of
irreversibility and nonsubstitutability, intertempo-
ral and threshold effects, buffering capacity,
cause-effect time lags, valuation, scale, hierarchy,
and problem displacement (Dryzek, 1987; Arrow
et al., 1995; Costanza et al., in press) are ignored.
In short, broad sweeping definitions of con-
sumption allow analysts from two opposing
camps to rehash familiar arguments and, at least
with respect to pricing, come to similar policy
recommendations, namely, taxes and subsidies.
Neither shows how a consumption perspective, as
 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
opposed to a production perspective (see below)
or, say, an income or industrialization or even
population perspective, offers new insights into
environmental problems. Most significantly, nei-
ther ties consumption patterns to biophysical pro-
cesses. Myers in effect says that all economic
activity (or at least that conducted by the wealthy
few) destroys the environment. Vincent and
Panayotou say consumers do not destroy the en-
vironment, producers do (or producers in dis-
torted markets do).
In the book, En6ironmentally Significant Con-
sumption (1997), arguably the most thoroughly
reasoned analytic treatment to date on the con-
sumption and environment problem, psychologist
Paul Stern and his colleagues do show how some
consumption patterns lead to environmental im-
pacts. For example, motor vehicle travel can be
disaggregated to show how carbon emissions vary
over time and among Northern countries. But in
some of the work in this collection, consumption
is individual and household purchasing, in others
it is energy and material flows, and in still others
it is economic activity. By defining consumption
as human transformations, the authors not only
employ the term variously, they readily slide into
the broad research agenda known as human di-
mensions of global change. In fact, in the book’s
conclusion, the authors barely mention consump-
tion, instead focussing almost exclusively on ‘‘the
causes of significant anthropogenic environmental
changes’’ (p. 136), a critical agenda to be sure, but
not distinctively consumption.
The central weakness of this and related ap-
proaches may derive from the apparent intended
audience, governmental policy makers, primarily
those at the federal level. In En6ironmentally Sig-
nificant Consumption, a brief reference to a pur-
portedly successful example of consumption
management is revealing. In critiquing a popular
usage of consumption that targets individuals, not
organizations, Stern cites automobile emissions
control technology as a ‘politically practicable
policy’ and then argues that ‘‘a broader definition
of consumption might help identify such strategies
and allow analysis of how much they can accom-
plish’’ (p. 19). As I will argue further below, such
policies are best seen as consistent with the pre-
351
vailing perspective on economic and environmen-
tal problems, namely, the production perspective.
Production-oriented policies may be politically ex-
pedient and they may reduce the intended envi-
ronmental impact, but they do not fundamentally
change the problem, in this case, automobile use
and its myriad environmental consequences.
Rather, they tend to displace the problem or
create new problems.
A second common usage is to equate consump-
tion with materialism. Critical and religious stud-
ies have a longstanding history examining
changing patterns of consumption in modern soci-
eties in the context of materialism, alienation in
the work place, cultural imperialism, gender dis-
crimination, and personal dissatisfaction (e.g. Sci-
tovsky, 1976/1992; Rappoport, 1994; Richins,
1994; Miller, 1995; Schor, 1995; Agarwal, 1996;
Ger and Belk, 1996; Ahuvia and Wong, 1997;
Ger, 1997; Wilk, 1998). With the rise of environ-
mental concerns, these critiques have expanded to
include the environment. What is more, social
critics and environmental analysts and activists
alike have tended to appropriate each other’s
findings. Anthropologists can not only denounce
the rise in materialist values among traditional
peoples, but show that forests are despoiled in the
process. Environmentalists can not only argue
that biophysical conditions limit overall consump-
tion, but that personal well-being does not im-
prove with ever-increasing convenience and
material indulgence. The mutual crossover of
these two lines of analysis and prescription may
enhance the agenda of each but it does not consti-
tute a focussed research agenda on the consump-
tion–environment interface. A consumption and
environment agenda is useful to the extent it
generates new questions and insights which is
unlikely when one field merely appropriates issues
from another field to buttress a pre-existing
framework or prescription.
A third common usage is to insert consumption
in analyses and action agendas regarding the un-
evenness of the distribution of economic goods. It
is commonplace to hear, for example, that the
North with 20% of the world’s population con-
sumes 70% of the world’s resources. Such a state-
ment could read equally well as the North
352 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
produces 70% of the world’s goods. To frame the
North–South discrepancy as a consumption
problem is to imply excess or inequity. If it is
excess, then the analyst must specify what exactly
is excessive—any material use beyond basic hu-
man needs? Anything beyond the society’s aver-
age? Anything beyond comparable societies’
average? Such questions lead one into a morass of
competing claims for the moral high ground in
lifestyle and individual and collective choice. Res-
olution is extremely unlikely. If excess is anything
that has environmental impact, then all material
use is indicted, production and consumption, hu-
man and non-human. If it is only that which is
harmful then it begs precisely the key question —
what is harmful? Answering this question — that
is, what is harmful about consumption as opposed
to production or overall economic activity or
material provisioning generally — begins to nar-
row the agenda. Research must show how con-
suming behavior itself is harmful. It should show
how the distribution of harms is distinctively tied
to consumption patterns, not to, say, investment,
lending, trade or technological patterns, all of
which have distinctive research agendas.
If the problem is one of inequity, no analytic
advantage is gained by calling it consumption.
Adding the environment and calling the problem
consumption only muddles the longstanding de-
bates of North and South, haves and have-nots,
rich and poor, powerful and powerless, to include
environmental inequities. These problems are real
and serious, but, a priori, there is no reason why
consumption per se should be identified as the
problem. Access to resources, control of decision
making, and ability to resist external intrusions
are closer to the problem and agendas are devel-
oped in politics, community development, civil
society, and the like.
A fourth usage is to conflate consumption with
population or technology issues. One tendency is
to label what is truly a consumption problem as a
population problem. For example, from 1960 to
1990 in the US state of Michigan the amount of
land converted to residential and commercial use
increased 76% (Wilkins, 1997, p. 7). A common
reason given is that more and more people need
housing and the evidence is their willingness to
pay for lots and houses in the countryside. The
fact, however, is that in the same time period,
Michigan’s population increased only 13%. The
problem is not primarily a population problem
but, indeed, a consumption problem, using up
farmland when other residential space is available.
Freshwater usage is similar. According to a
United Nations report, worldwide water usage
this century has been increasing more than twice
as fast as population (Lewis, 1997).
In general, the population problem is easily
construed as a consumption problem because
more individuals obviously consume more, all else
equal. The consumption problem arises, however,
when all else is not equal, when, regardless of
population changes, demand on ecosystem ser-
vices increases. If China’s population increases
and everyone continues to (mostly) rely on pedal
power for everyday transportation, the increase in
demand for bicycle tyres is part of the population
problem. But if China’s population increases or if
it stays the same and people shift to automobiles,
creating increased demand for car tyres, fossil
fuels, and roads, it is a consumption problem.
The problem of consumption also tends to be
conflated with technological issues and manage-
ment. If people buy a product that is produced
with more pollution than an alternative product,
the problem is primarily one of production. It can
only be a consumption problem if, for example,
the consumer has useful information about the
life cycle of the product, prices and quality are
equivalent, and the consumer still buys the more
environmentally harmful product. These condi-
tions stimulate important research questions
about the distribution of impacts of consumption
patterns—e.g. who really pays for gas guzzling
private automobiles in the US.
Similarly, resource management questions are
generally framed as production problems when
they are better construed as consumption prob-
lems. To illustrate, if a fishery is being overfished
and the proposed solutions are improved nets,
more efficient use of by-catch, and better fishery
management, the problem is being construed as a
production problem. To construe the overfishing
as a consumption problem one would have to ask
about the nature of consumer demand, why it
 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
exceeds the regenerative capacity of the fishery,
and why fishers whose livelihoods depend on the
fishery are responding more to market signals
than to ecological signals. I return to this point in
the next section.
In sum, when common usages of consumption
are explored in some depth, the concept of con-
sumption becomes slippery and the utility of their
applications doubtful. Conflating consumption
with overall economic activity risks sliding into a
conventional approach to environmental prob-
lems, namely, as problems of production that only
macro-level governmental policies can correct.
Conflating it with materialism or maldistribution
only confuses other agendas and misses the eco-
logical component. And conflating it with popula-
tion or technology issues obscures many of the
driving forces. An objective of the remainder of
this article is to suggest ways of specifying and
distinguishing the issue of consumption and envi-
ronmental impact to avoid such conceptual and,
eventually, policy problems. Not to do so is to
risk the common tendencies of jumping on the
bandwagon with the latest buzzword in the envi-
ronmental debate, stretching the new concept to
encompass all conceivable concerns and, in the
process, forfeiting any advantage — for analysis or
for behavior change — that may accrue to a new
perspective on environmental problems. The risk,
in short, is to simply re-label old problems and
old solutions without generating new insights. The
careful analyst and activist must accept the possi-
bility that the consumption topic may, in the end,
not yield new insights into environmental prob-
lems. Consumption may be no more than a buzz-
word. A premise in this article, however, is that it
can be more.
Below, I suggest two general analytic ap-
proaches that may push the topic beyond mere
fad. I assert that, in pursuing the research topic of
consumption and environment, one has to make
some basic choices, each of which has its own
limitations. One choice is between accepting the
prevailing production – consumption, supply – de-
mand, producer–consumer dichotomy, on the one
hand, and seeking an alternative framework on
the other. In the production – consumption di-
chotomy, one can investigate consumption via
353
price and income elasticities and purchasing pat-
terns. These are well developed in microeconomics
and marketing studies and need no elaboration
here. To focus on environmental effects, however,
one can investigate a broad range of product-re-
lated decisions of which the purchase decision is
only one. I explore some of these in the next
section below. This approach attempts to open
the black box of consumer sovereignty and con-
sumer preferences. It also rejects the exclusive
focus on market purchasing and considers a range
of behaviors that comprise the end use of re-
sources and products. The limitation of this ap-
proach is the tendency to focus on marketplace
activity to the exclusion of a wider range of
human activities that are, in some sense, ‘consum-
ing’. Moreover, environmental impacts tend to be
incorporated as add-ons, not as integral compo-
nents of the analytic framework. Thus, in the
following section I posit a framework that begins
with material provisioning and its biophysical ef-
fects. The aim is to suggest not only how research
on consumption can transcend the production–
consumption dichotomy and how it can follow
different paths but, importantly, how the analytic
starting points—price determination and pur-
chasing behavior versus resource use—can lead to
very different questions and prescriptions.
3. Consumption as product use
Consumption as the necessary complement to
production is eating the apple, burning the log,
wearing the socks. A consumption and environ-
ment research agenda must examine such deci-
sions and influences for their biophysical impacts.
A conventional starting point is the decision to
purchase. From the prevailing commercial per-
spective, especially that of retailing, whatever hap-
pens after purchase is of little concern unless the
consumer’s anticipation of subsequent decisions
affects the purchase decision. But from an envi-
ronmental impact perspective, the critical decision
is a combination of purchase and product use
decisions where, in some cases, major purchases
drive resource use (Stern et al., 1997, p. 130) and,
in others, the patterns of use are most important
(Nordman, 1995).
354 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
Disaggregating the relative impacts of purchase
and use decisions is certainly critical to the con-
sumption and environment agenda. But a more
extensive approach would be to go beyond
‘product’ to consider the ‘non-purchase’ decision.
That is, individuals consume to meet needs.
Sometimes those needs can only be met with
purchased items—say, grain, electric power and
high technology equipment. But many other needs
can be obtained through productive effort, indi-
vidually or collectively. Fresh produce can be
purchased at a grocery store or grown oneself.
Personal transportation can be had by driving to
work or walking (or at least walking part way).
Community members can raise funds to purchase
playground equipment and pay to have it in-
stalled or they can collect materials and build it
themselves. If one has a need for musical experi-
ence, one can buy an album or call a few musician
friends over for a jam session. In each of these
examples, a priori, one cannot know for sure
which activity has the least environmental impact.
But an initial and plausible operating assumption
is that the commercial, purchased choices are
more a part of the current trends — ever-
increasing throughput, ever more ‘manufactured’
resource use (see below) — than the non-
commercial, and thus have a greater impact.
Little if any research has been done on peoples’
choices not to purchase or to seek less consump-
tive, less material-intensive means of satisfying a
need (De Young, 1990 – 1991; Maniates, 1998).
The reason may be obvious: it is very hard to get
an analytic or empirical handle on an act that
entails not doing something. But my hunch (and
it can only be a hunch given the state of knowl-
edge on this kind of question) is that this gap
exists in large part because the question is out of,
or contrary to, the dominant belief system where
value is presumed to inhere in market transac-
tions. A consumption perspective that is more
expansive, that recognizes that individuals actu-
ally meet their needs with non-commercial or
relatively non-material means, makes the non-pur-
chase decision a critical focus of inquiry.
To develop the research agenda within the con-
sumption–production dichotomy, then, product
use, not just purchase, must be addressed. What is
more, both post-purchase decisions and non-pur-
chase decisions must be included in the analysis.
At least two empirical questions arise. One, under
what conditions do individuals switch from pur-
chasing a high environmental impact item to a
relatively low impact item, when impact is evalu-
ated not just in production but in the use of the
product itself? This question might fit existing
research programs including that of energy use
(e.g. Cleveland et al., 1984; Schipper, 1997);
household metabolism (e.g. Noorman and
Uiterkamp, 1998); industrial ecology (e.g. Ke-
oleian and Menerey, 1994; Graedel and Allenby,
1995) and of market research (e.g. Richins, 1994;
Ahuvia and Wong, 1997; Ger, 1997). Two, and
this may well be the most difficult yet most impor-
tant question, under what conditions do individu-
als opt for a non-commercial or relati6ely
non-material response to meet a need? Research
does exist on intrinsic satisfaction as it relates to
conservation behavior (De Young, 1990–1991),
subjective well-being (Inglehart and Abramson,
1994; Andrews and Withey, 1976), and work and
leisure (Scitovsky, 1976/1992; Schor, 1995). Much
of this research could be extended to consumption
patterns and their environmental impacts.
Conducting such research within the framework
of the supply–demand, producer–consumer di-
chotomy is important if, for no other reason,
production has been the dominant focus, not only
in economics but in the economic strands of other
disciplines including political science, sociology,
and anthropology. Environmental and policy
studies generally have also been primarily in-
formed by the dichotomy. It may also be the
safest research tact, given the hegemony of the
economistic belief system. Unpacking and ‘de-ag-
gregating’ the demand function for environmental
impacts can enrich existing research traditions
and inform policymaking and do so without chal-
lenging their underlying assumptions. But for
those seeking a more transformative approach to
environmental problems, the prevailing di-
chotomy is probably more of a hindrance than an
aid. It tends to constrain the analysis to market
functioning (and malfunctioning) where ‘the envi-
ronment’ is merely an externality.
 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
A more radical approach, one that challenges
this dichotomy and its propensity to relegate con-
sumption to a black box or to the marginal status
of emotion or personal values, would be to treat
all resource use as consuming and ask what risks
are entailed in patterns of resource acquisition,
processing, and distribution. This approach would
be more consistent with the ecological economics
perspective where human economic activity is
seen as an open subset of a finite and closed
biophysical system. Consuming is that part of
human activity that ‘uses up’ material, energy,
and other valued things (Daly, 1996).
4. Consumption as ‘using up’
A definition of consumption that transcends the
supply–demand dichotomy would start with bio-
physical conditions and their intersection with
human behavior. That intersection, following
from systems theory, has many attributes but key
is ecological feedback, that is, signals from the
biophysical system that are picked up and reacted
to by individuals and groups in the social system
(Kay, 1991; Ulanowicz, 1997; Costanza et al., in
press). At its most basic and general level, the
human behavior that intersects with the biophysi-
cal realm can be termed material pro6isioning, that
is, the appropriation of material and energy for
survival and reproduction.
4.1. Material pro6isioning
All human activity can be divided among over-
lapping sets of behavior that includes reproduc-
tion, defense, social interaction, identity
formation, and material provisioning. Three
broad categories of material provisioning are
hunting/gathering, cultivating, and manufactur-
ing. The question then is, what aspects of each
category of material provisioning are best con-
strued as consumption? Alternatively, the ques-
tion is, if hunting/gathering, cultivating, and
manufacturing is each construed as consumption,
rather than as production, the dominant view-
point, what insights are gained? To answer this
requires first a general definition of consumption
itself.
355
According to the American Heritage dictionary,
consumption is to expend or use up, to degrade or
destroy. Thermodynamically, it is to increase en-
tropy. Biologically, it is capturing useable mate-
rial and energy to enhance survival and
reproduction and, ultimately, to pass on one’s
genes. Socially, it is using up material and energy
to enhance personal standing, group identity, and
autonomy.
A defining characteristic of consuming behav-
ior, therefore, is that it is that feature of material
provisioning that permanently degrades material
and energy and serves some purpose to the indi-
vidual or to the group. Within hunting/gathering,
consumption begins when the deer is shot or the
apple is picked and ends when the user has fully
expended the material and energy in that deer or
apple. It is important to stress that, in hunting/
gathering, the consumption act is only the appro-
priation of the item and its ingestion. The one deer
and the one apple are permanently degraded, not
the deer herd or species and not the apple tree or
species. This level of consumption is the most
fundamental biologically and, indeed, is integral
to all life. When some argue that consumption is
‘natural’, they are right—at this level.
In cultivation, one begins to see both the exten-
sion of consumption beyond single items and the
external effects of consumption. Consumption in
cultivation begins when a forest is cleared or a
grassland plowed. It ends when the crop is har-
vested and the wood burned or the bread eaten.
What is expended—used up or degraded—is not
just the wood fiber or seed of individual plants.
Rather, it is, first and foremost, the ecosystem
that preceded the cultivation and, second, the
cultivated plants that no longer function within
integrated ecosystems. Cultivation may be con-
ventionally thought of as production, that is, as
adding value. But from the consumption perspec-
tive, a perspective grounded in the biophysical,
cultivation is a set of degrading behaviors—clear-
ing, breeding, harvesting, and ingesting. I should
note that characterizing cultivation as degrading
is not to judge it as wrong. I use ‘degrade’ primar-
ily in the thermodynamic sense of increased en-
tropy but also in the ecological sense of decreased
autonomous functioning over long periods of
356 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
time. Thus, a corn field may generate more calo-
ries than its grassland predecessor but it does so
only with continuous external inputs. It likely
operates at a net energy loss and without the
resilience of a less ‘productive’ yet self-organizing
system.
Also, this treatment is not to suggest that there
is no value in cultivation. The consumption per-
spective on cultivation merely directs analytic at-
tention to degradation and irreversibility in a way
that the prevailing perspective — the production
perspective—does not, or does so only as an
add-on where value added is the focus and envi-
ronmental impacts are unfortunate side effects
that can be cleaned up if actors have the funds,
the interest, and the political will.
Whereas cultivation involves rearranging extant
plants and animals, manufacturing, quite literally,
is making things by hand. It is applying human
labor and ingenuity to create wholly new sub-
stances. Ecologically, it draws on more than the
available soil and water and associated ecosys-
tems. In particular, manufacturing extends con-
sumption beyond the direct use of individual
organisms and ecosystems to the use of energy
sources and waste sinks. Converting a log into
lumber and then furniture entails an expenditure
of low entropy fuel and the disposal of waste
material and heat. From the production perspec-
tive, this is value added. But from the consump-
tion perspective, it is using up secondary resources
(energy and waste sink capacities) to amplify and
accelerate the use of primary resources (forests,
grasslands, fisheries, etc.). Consuming here may
entail permanent and unavoidable depletion as
with fossil fuels, or a temporary drawdown with
the possibility of regeneration as with soil
buffering.
Both cultivation and manufacturing risk per-
manent degeneration in ecosystem functioning.
But manufacturing is generally more risky due to
the separation of activity from primary resources.
High technology and global finance are extreme
examples where so-called ‘wealth creation’ is far
removed, some would argue completely removed,
from a natural resource base. The consumption
perspective directs attention to the heightened
risks of such distanced material provisioning
(Dryzek, 1987; Princen, 1997a).
In sum, an ecologically grounded definition of
consumption takes as a starting point human
material provisioning and the draw on ecosystem
services. It is distinguished from those that begin
with market behavior and ask what purchasers do
in the aggregate and from those that start with
social stratification and ask how consumption
patterns establish hierarchy or identity. The po-
tential of such an ecological definition is to escape
the confines of both limits-to-growth and
economistic frameworks that tend to prescribe
top–down, centralized correctives for errant (i.e.
over-consuming) human behavior. An ecological
approach to consumption directs attention to eco-
logical risk and the myriad ways clever humans
have of displacing the true costs of their material
provisioning. The next step in conceptualizing the
consumption–environment nexus is to specify
what is excessive or maladaptive consumption. In
particular, it is to ask how a given act of con-
sumption (e.g. eating the apple, converting the
forest, manufacturing the chair) can be inter-
preted or judged. I start with the broad biophysi-
cal context in which consuming behavior can be
interpreted as ‘natural’ or ‘background’ and then
consider both ecological and social definitions of
degradative consumption, what I will call ‘over-
consumption’ and ‘misconsumption’.
4.2. Excess consumption: three interpreti6e layers
A strictly ecological interpretation takes con-
sumption as perfectly ‘natural’. To survive, all
organisms must consume, that is, degrade re-
sources. This interpretation of a given consump-
tion act I term background consumption. It refers
to the normal, biological functioning of all organ-
isms, humans included. Every act of background
consumption by an individual alters the environ-
ment, the total impact being a function of aggre-
gate consumption of the population. Individuals
consume to meet a variety of needs, physical and
psychological, both of which contribute to the
ability of the individual to survive and reproduce,
and hence to its ability to pass on its genes.
From this limited, asocial, nonethical interpre-
tation of consumption, all consumption patterns
and consequences are natural, including popula-
 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
tion explosions and crashes and irreversibilities
caused by the expansion of one species at the
expense of other species. If, however, the interpre-
tation is modified to include human concern for
population crashes, species extinctions, permanent
diminution of ecosystem functioning, diminished
reproductive and developmental potential of indi-
viduals, and other irreversible effects, then ‘prob-
lematic consumption’ becomes relevant. I specify
two interpretive layers, o6erconsumption and
misconsumption.
Overconsumption is that level or quality of
consumption that undermines a species’ own life-
support system and for which individuals and
collectivities have choices in their consuming pat-
terns. Overconsumption is an aggregate level con-
cept. With instances of overconsumption,
individual behavior may be perfectly sensible con-
forming either to the evolutionary dictates of
fitness or to the economically productive dictates
of rational decision making. Collective, social be-
havior may appear sensible, too, as when in-
creased consumption is needed in an advanced
industrial economy to stimulate productive capac-
ity and compete in international markets. But
eventually the collective outcome from overcon-
suming is catastrophe for the population or the
species. From a thermodynamic and ecological
perspective, this is the problem of excessive
throughput (Georgescu-Roegen, 1993). The popu-
lation or species has commanded more of the
regenerative capacity of natural resources and
more of the assimilative capacity of waste sinks
than the relevant ecosystems can support. And it
is an ethical problem because it inheres only in
those populations or species that can reflect on
their collective existence. What is more, for hu-
mans it becomes a political problem when the
trends are toward collapse and when the distribu-
tion of impacts generates conflict.
The second interpretive layer within problem-
atic consumption I term misconsumption. It deals
with individual behavior. The problem here is that
the individual consumes in a way that undermines
his or her own well-being even if there are no
aggregate effects on the population or species. Put
differently, the long-term effect of an individual’s
consumption pattern is either suboptimal or a net
357
loss to that individual. It may or may not, how-
ever, undermine collective survival. Such con-
sumption can occur along several dimensions.
Physiologically, humans misconsume when they
eat too much in a sitting or over a lifetime or
when they become addicted to a drug. The long-
term burden overwhelms the immediate gratifica-
tion. Psychologically, humans misconsume when,
for example, they fall into the advertiser’s trap of
‘perpetual dissatisfaction’. They purchase an item
that provides fleeting satisfaction resulting in yet
another purchase. Economically, humans miscon-
sume when they overwork, that is, engage in
onerous work beyond what can be compensated
with additional income. With more income and
less time, they attempt to compensate by using the
additional income, which is to say, by consuming
(Schor, 1995).4
Ecologically, humans misconsume when an in-
crement of increased resource use harms that re-
source or related resources and humans who
depend on the resource. In the short term, if one
builds a house on a steep, erosion-prone slope, the
construction itself increases the likelihood of mas-
sive erosion and the destruction of one’s con-
sumption item, the house. In the longer term, if
one uses leaded house paint, one’s children or
grandchildren are more likely to have develop-
mental problems.
Misconsumption, then, refers to those individ-
ual resource using acts that result in net losses for
the individual. They are not ‘rational’ or sensible
in any of several senses—psychological, eco-
nomic, or health-wise. And, once again, they may
or may not add up to aggregate, ecological de-
cline. The question that critically defines the con-
sumption and environment research agenda at
this, the individual level, is, what forms of individ-
ual misconsumption lead to collective overcon-
4
This is not to say that the marginal work effort is generally
compensated by the additional income. Compensation takes
many forms, both extrinsic (e.g. monetary, public recognition)
and intrinsic (e.g. sense of competence, autonomy, achieve-
ment, well-being) and varies from case to case. It is to say,
however, that humans occasionally work beyond what can be
explained by additional monetary or psychic income. The
reasons for this are complex but include a lack of flexible time
in the work place (Schor, 1995).
358 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
sumption? Put differently, when is overconsump-
tion not simply a problem of excessive through-
put —that is, a problem of too many people or
too much economic activity — and when is it a
question of the inability of individuals to meet
their needs in a given social context? When, in
other words, do individuals simultaneously wreak
harm on themselves and on the environment
through their consumption patterns?
These questions are important because they
point toward potential interventions that make
sense at both levels and without requiring evolu-
tionarily novel human behavior such as global
citizenship (Low and Heinen, 1993) or authoritar-
ian command structures (De Young, 1996). These
questions point toward win – win, ‘no-regrets’
policies that simultaneously produce improved
human welfare and reduced ecological risk to
humans’ life-support system. A critical area of
research, therefore, is the intersection of miscon-
sumption and overconsumption where individuals
and society together can potentially benefit from
improved consumption patterns. This may offer
the greatest, and certainly the easiest, opportuni-
ties for interventions. But a second area is at least
as important yet more vexing. This is consump-
tion patterns that involve individually satisfying
behavior with net benefits to the individual and,
say, to that individual’s kin, yet net harms to
others. This is unavoidably a distributional ques-
tion and, hence, a moral and political issue. Below
I explore part of this moral and political dimen-
sion by considering how producers must exercise
restraint and resistance when demand is
overwhelming.
4.3. Material decision chain
Categories of material provisioning and layers
of interpretation for a given consumption act help
position human consuming behavior in ways the
supply–demand dichotomy and the production
perspective do not. But these two approaches only
hint at actual decision making, the processes by
which individuals and organizations use and com-
pete for resources. Here, I posit a third approach
to consumption, modelling all human resource
use as a chain of decisions that begins with the
initial resource extraction decision and ends with
the final consumption and disposal decisions. This
‘material decision chain’ parallels the life cycle
approach of industrial ecology but traces deci-
sionmaking, including interactive decisionmaking
among more than one actor, rather than materials
and energy flow. A simple example illustrates the
approach and some of its implications.
Imagine a resource is stressed, say, more timber
is being harvested in a watershed than the forest
ecosystem can regenerate. What is more, the pri-
mary reason is demand. Consumers want more of
the timber than the ecosystem can bear and they
can pay a sufficiently high price or marshall
enough coercion to compel high production.5 In
this case, forest users—that is, direct users, those
who decide harvest rates and methods and man-
agement techniques—are responding completely
to demand, managing the forest and choosing
harvest rates and practices that best fit that de-
mand. As demand increases, they increase the
harvest rate in the short term and, for the longer
term, plant, say, fast-growing species.
Such production-oriented measures may be able
to accommodate more of the demand but when
demand continues to exceed supply (in an ecolog-
ical sense), the real issue is, indeed, the demand,
not the supply. Better forest management prac-
tices, less wood waste, more efficient milling, and
lower transportation costs will have little effect on
the excessiveness of the demand.6 The overhar-
vesting is, therefore, really a consumption issue,
yet one that can affect all steps along the chain of
decisions. Activists will typically focus on the
end-use of the chain, attempting to dampen de-
5
This scenario, although highly simplified to make the
argument, is not unlike that which occurred in the great
cutovers of North America (Cronon, 1991, pp. 148 – 206) or
that are occurring currently in South America and Southeast
Asia (Peluso, 1993).
6
More efficient use of a tree may appear to be a logical
response to increasing demand. Certainly, getting more use-
able wood per tree would, all else equal, accommodate at least
some of the excess demand. But, in general, such an efficiency
always makes sense, regardless of demand. The issue raised
here is what a producer must do outside of production efficien-
cies to deal with excess demand and still ensure long-term
production from the resource.
 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
mand. This is the aim of certification programs,
moratoria, and bans (Princen, 1996; Kiker and
Putz, 1997). Producers might focus on the other
end, extraction, sensing a threat to their own
long-term production. They may initially seek
production-oriented measures — that is, those
whose primary aim is to respond to demand as it
exists and, in the case of excess demand, to in-
crease output. But as these prove inadequate in
the face of ecologically excessive demand, under
some conditions they will seek measures to limit
output (McGoodwin, 1990; Colchester and
Lohman, 1993; Alcorn and Toledo, 1995). Such
measures entail behaviors by producers that tend
to be ignored when a production perspective is
dominant. Two such behaviors coming from the
consumption perspective are restraint and
resistance.
If forest users respond not only to demand but
also to threats to their own long-term economic
security or to their desire for multiple uses of the
forest—for example, timber, recreation, and wa-
tershed—then, when demand is low, these forest
users would harvest little and invest little. But
they would also shift to different forest uses, from
timber harvesting only, say, to hunting and
fishing and tourism, as well as to different means
of making a living.7 If demand is high (and this
would be the test case for long-term sustainable
use), they would increase the harvest rates only to
a point. Beyond that point, a point determined
not by short-term economic opportunity but by a
sense of ecological limits, by a risk-averse ap-
proach to complex natural systems and to users’
economic security, they would restrain their har-
vests so as not to jeopardize future use and those
other uses (Gadgil and Guha, 1992; Acheson and
Wilson, 1996; Princen, 1997b). What is more, if
7
Some evidence does exist that extractors who attempt to
maximize their long-term economic security rather than re-
spond to extant demand pursue strategies of diversified pro-
duction. When either demand or the resource declines, they
shift to other pursuits. Fishermen in the Norwegian Arctic and
many independent farmers follow this model (Jentoft and
Kristoffersen, 1989; McGoodwin, 1990; Clunies-Ross and
Hildyard, 1992). To my knowledge, however, no systematic
research has been done on such work strategies and their
impact on natural resources.
359
demand is so intrusive, so overwhelming via
temptingly high prices or coercion (force or law),
then a second behavior would be resistance. Users
would develop organizational, legal, or, if neces-
sary, coercive means of their own to resist the
intrusion, limit their harvest, and thus maintain
the resource over the long term.8
The problem here may appear to be one of
production—i.e. harvest rates. But it is really one
of consumption vis-a-vis production. The foci of
conventional production analysis—questions of
investment, management, extraction, pricing, pro-
cessing, distributing—tend not to ask questions
about restraint and resistance among producers.
Quite the contrary, the productive enterprise is
precisely one of opening markets, lowering prices,
gaining efficiencies, and capturing market share—
in short, increasing production. It is a process
that sees the addition of value, not the subtrac-
tion of value, not the risks to multiple uses or to
the long-term viability of the supporting ecosys-
tem.
In sum, a consumption perspective on resource
use problems—especially problems of ecological
overuse—compels examination of decisions
among extractors and processors that tend not to
get asked from a conventional production per-
spective. Among these decisions are those associ-
ated with the general behaviors of restraint,
that is, self-limiting behavior, and of resistance
to destructive intrusions. Comparing cases
where restraint and resistance are prominent
with those in which they are not, and applying
indices of sustainable practice would be a logical
research direction. I turn finally to the difficulty of
pursuing a research agenda on consumption
and environment, an agenda that at once chal-
lenges the dominant belief system and, I argue,
contravenes personal, analytic and policy orienta-
tions.
8
Empirical support for restraint does exist, especially in the
common property literature (Ostrom, 1990; Bromley, 1992).
Other instances in private property are beginning to develop.
See, for example, the cases being developed by the MacArthur
Foundation’s Sustainable Forestry program. On resistance, see
Gadgil and Guha (1992), Peluso (1993) and special sections of
The Ecologist.
360 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
5. Resistance to the agenda: or, why the person
sitting next to you does not want to talk about
consumption
On first mention, consumption is readily seen
by analysts, policymakers, and others as an im-
portant topic, one probably deserving of consider-
able research and action. People seem to know at
least intuitively that most individuals of the North
and most elites of the South are consuming too
much. But my experience in the classroom, with
colleagues, and with funders is that pursuing the
issue much further, whether conceptually, empiri-
cally or normatively, makes people uneasy. They
prefer to shift to questions of overpopulation,
inefficient production, or skewed governmental
policies. I offer explanations for this reaction
from three realms of activity: the personal, the
analytical, and the political.
5.1. Personal
In a graduate seminar on this topic, at one
point or another, each member felt the need to
reveal one’s own misconsumption or one’s appar-
ent contribution to overconsumption. It was al-
most as if one could not address this forbidden
topic without first admitting one’s sins. Activists
Ryan and Durning found that readers of early
drafts of their book on the impacts of everyday
products felt ‘‘overwhelmed or depressed after
learning the true stories of how things are made’’
(Ryan and Durning, 1997, p. 6). The authors in
turn felt compelled to issue a warning that the
product life stories could be disturbing and that
readers should pace themselves.
These anecdotes suggest that consumption is a
topic that is deeply and unavoidably personal.
Unlike many related issues such as population or
conservation or international development, it is
nearly impossible to get analytic distance. The
reason may be because consumption is one social
problem that, in its contemporary manifestation
(i.e. industrial driven misconsumption and over-
consumption), cannot be assigned to someone
else. For Northerners, international development
and population, say, can be easily construed as
someone else’s problem. Poverty and overpopula-
tion are problems of the South, the uneducated,
the undercapitalized, the pre-modern. Not so with
consumption. The finger points at us Northerners
and Southern elites. Another reason may be that
it is very personal in its execution—we all do
it—and, for reasons of individual liberty or reli-
gious right or cultural trait, we resist intrusions,
however well intended.
5.2. Analytic
A second reason why consumption makes peo-
ple uneasy is that it is analytically slippery under
the dominant rationalist paradigm. As discussed
in Section 2, it tends to become conflated with
more familiar issues of production, materials and
energy flow, materialism, and population. When
the concept is pushed beyond the dominant per-
spective, it necessarily challenges that perspective.
The best way to see this is via the conventional
notion of efficiency.
A productive efficiency is an undeniably, unas-
sailably good thing. If one can produce the same
quantity of goods with less input or more goods
with the same input, everyone is better off. Better
off ceteris paribus, of course. But it is precisely
here in the ubiquitous qualifier, ‘all else equal’,
that aggregate resource use and the scale of eco-
nomic activity enter. It is here that irreplaceable
ecosystem services are, in effect, taken as given.
In practice, efficiency gains can become in-
stances of problem displacement (Dryzek, 1987).
They can be disguised means of passing on true
costs in space or time, especially when generations
and political boundaries are spanned (Princen,
1997a). What is more, efficiency gains can divert
attention from the real problem, that is, scale and
ecological functioning. For example, in the US,
automobiles have become considerably more effi-
cient since the 1970s oil shocks. But the country
as a whole is no less dependent on foreign oil nor
does it emit less CO2, SO2, and other pollutants.
Government agencies built more roads and people
drive farther and faster and go through more cars
than they did in the past. The efficiencies, that is,
the increased miles per gallon of fuel per car, have
achieved, at best, only one thing environmentally:
a lower rate of increase in fossil fuel burning gi6en
 T. Princen / Ecological Economics 31 (1999) 347–363
all the changes in consumption behavior. But,
of course, from the perspective of toxic
loadings, CO2 emissions, habitat destruction, lost
farmland and the like, the consumption behavior
is precisely the issue of most interest and, ulti-
mately, most import, not the technical efficiency.
It seems that few people want to talk about this,
preferring to pursue ever-greater efficiencies. The
reason is that to talk about consumption
levels and consumption patterns is to talk
‘out of paradigm’. It is to eschew the produc-
tion perspective and to raise analytic questions
that conventional analytic tools — price de-
termination, cost-benefit analysis, even life cycle
analysis—cannot comfortably address. It is,
ultimately, to raise question of purpose (Schu-
macher, 1973; Daly and Townsend, 1993; Smith,
1993).
5.3. Policy
This, then, brings me to a third realm of activ-
ity that may account for a general reluctance to
engage this issue. Policy makers, both private and
public, often find problems easier to solve — or, at
least, address—by increasing the pie, not dividing
it or redistributing it. If I run out of book shelf
space, I, in my accustomed efficiency mode, con-
strue the problem as too few shelves and thus seek
more bookshelves or a bigger office or, ideally,
both. I tend not to construe the problem as too
many books and consequently do not seek ways
to limit the inflow or to donate the excess to the
library. If traffic is congested, planners expand the
road. From an efficiency perspective, the problem
is construed as inadequate avenue, not too many
cars. There are, of course, many good reasons for
this individual and collective behavior. A large
literature exists on the growth imperative (Hirsh,
1976/1995; Meadows et al., 1992; Ayres, 1996;
Daly, 1996).
To address the consumption question not only
forces the hard question — how to divide or redis-
tribute the pie, sometimes a shrinking pie — and
thus precludes the relatively easy response, growth
promotion, but challenges individual choice and
free will which, at least in North America, are
held sacrosanct.
361
The current belief system operates as if free
choice makes no threat to the biophysical system.
Certainly leaders will restrict choice when harm to
others is direct, immediate, and visible. Consider
restrictions on heavy weapons, pornography, slan-
der, and noxious substances. But in the present
paradigm, one can irreversibly destroy an ecosys-
tem depriving themselves, others, and future gen-
erations of species and the functions, many
unknown, that are associated with those species in
an ecosystem. To construe such behavior as a
consumption problem, a problem that cannot be
solved by ever more economic activity or ever
more efficiencies, is to operate outside the domi-
nant belief system. It is to ‘shift paradigms’. And,
as with shifts in all paradigms—scientific, social,
and religious—most of us resist until change is
unavoidable.
We do, however, change. If former communists
can embrace free markets, it is not inconceivable
that individuals and policymakers in an ecologi-
cally constrained world can embrace, indeed, re-
embrace, such notions as thrift, frugality, and
self-reliance. Consequently, a major prescriptive
task of a consumption and environment research
agenda is to show how individuals can continue
to strive for more, how they can thrive, how they
can meet immutable human needs for status, iden-
tity, stimulation, association, and the like, and all
without ever-increasing material consumption.
Acknowledgements
Support for this research was provided by the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
(c 96-34311). Helpful comments on earlier drafts
were given by Edward Comor, Raymond De
Young, Maya Fischoff, Anu Kumar, Donald
Mayer, Daniel Mazmanian, Norman Myers, Karl
Steyaert, Paul Stern, and Richard Wilk.
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