The Dynamics of Use Efficiency

Some input to a general science and design of service-based consumption

John Manoochehri
20.10.07

Sustainability

Measuring

Optimising

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Current conceptual formulation and approach routes

New conceptual formulation (concept review) and new approach routes (optimising UE)
1.Introduction
It is agreed, politically and scientifically, that reducing the aggregate resource consumption of
industrially modern human societies (and human society at the global scale) is necessary to
achieve environmental sustainability. At the same time, it is not considered credible that, in
reducing resource consumption, welfare available per person - however this may be defined -
should be significantly reduced. e challenge, therefore, is not simply to reduce total resource
consumption of modern societies: it is to do this in a way which maintains personal welfare. is
problem class - less resources for at-least-equivalent welfare - we may call 'sustainable
consumption'.

1.1. Services as sustainable consumption

One approach to sustainable consumption has been the proposal of replacing products with
'services'. is approach is based on a pragmatic assumption that services are in some way less
'material' than products, and perhaps also that less products are required in a service-based
consumption environment. Services replacing products, it is also assumed, offer at least as much
welfare. (Note: Here, phrases such as 'shift-to-services', product-service systems' ('PSS'), 'service-
based consumption systems', 'eco-services', 'functional sales', 'service paradigm', 'servicizing',
and similar all refer to the principle of replacing product-based final consumption with 'services'
in some way, for sustainability purposes. Also, the phase 'consumption system' means simply any
standardised means by which individual or business consumers gain access to products or
services.)

Despite a certain currency in policy discourse, the overarching approach of shifting to services
has been poorly served by policy and research. Scientifically, there is not even any currently
clear status on which discipline or set of disciplines is best placed to treat this topic. Classical
(environmental) engineering, economics, policy science, and the social science (broadly, from
sociology to psychology) disciplines seem related, but do not have ready-made tools for
handling it. e new disciplines of ecological economics and industrial ecology have to some
extent adopted the eco-services theme - but have not stabilised an outlook for it. Finally, the
design professions are also picking up the scent, on a pragmatic basis, with product design,
urban design, service design and interaction design all having claims to this subject.

e questions that these various traditions need to deal with include:

• what are the essential parameters of the 'shift to services', i.e. what does this actually mean;
• how can the environmental benefit of a shift to services if any be measured;
• how can such a shift be embedded in economic models that drive industrial development;
• how can the shift be embedded in processes of business transformation;
• in what way does the shift require or cause consumer attitude/behaviour change;
• what lessons can be learnt from existing services in promoting a shift to services;
• can special parameters for the optimisation of service-based consumption systems be
developed?

is thesis reviews and contributes to each of these questions, in particular by offering
clarifications, critiques and formal presentations of the problem. It researches then some steps
towards designing and optimising consumption systems.
[Add Background Section:

Sustainable Consumption history and mandate]

2.Current approaches
2.1. The anatomy of the service-shift debate
2.1.1. Deep principles

Some deep scientific thoughts - therefore general and not tractable for action or even research -
provide the principle that motivates this emphasis on the shift to services.

Daly ([ref ]) has indicated the need for the industrial production stock to be used more
'intensively', conceptually isolating the quantity and durability of the physical production stock,
and requiring that somehow 'more' and/or 'better' use be made of it over long periods of time,
before it is somehow considered obsolescent or depleted. Michael Jacobs likewise, in his
powerful review of the base of green economic thought (Jacobs, 1994) makes a general case for
more extensive use of the produced commodity stock.

Similar thoughts, from a systemic perspective of measuring the sustainability of industrial-

anthropic resource flows, are directly or indirecty found in much other literature emerging since
the 1950s. For example, in Odum ([ref ]), a background drawn from energy flows in ecosystems
where after an early growth phase fresh resource input to an existing biomass stock is slowed,
and the ecosystem requires only maintenance flows. is is used as a model for human systems
which are likewise encouraged to reduce their fresh material throughput once a developmental
base has been established, relying instead on maintenance inputs.

2.1.2.State of analysis

e service paradigm has been proposed since the 1960s and 70s in an explicit form (Becker
[xx], Stahel [xx]) as one pathway towards this 'better use of stuff' for the purpose of more
sustainable use of resources.

Since then, however, there have been no agreed formulations of what the service shift really
requires, nor by what metrics it is purported to be more sustainable. Services, construed in this
way, include a huge range of B2B and B2C offerings. ese include, 'leasing
floorcovering' ([Interface ref ]), 'sharing cars' ([Mobility ref ]), car-pooling ([Benkler ref ]),
'purchasing functional results' such as painted carbodies instead of paint ([DuPont ref ]),
digitalisation and lease-based access to information and cultural content ([digi ref ]), and
countless others.

One original typology - a review and aggregation of other proposed typologies - has been
proposed by Marcus Wong (2004). is situates the different types of consumption on a notional
axis from 'pure product offering' to 'pure service offering' - with 'more intensive utilisation of
goods' on the product end, and 'non-material-based services' on the other (presumably meaning
such things as teaching). e insight here is that the shift to services is - or appears to be -
essentially one of leveraging transformation along this axis: from 'more intensive use' of
products to 'less products and more services'.

What Wong adds here is a greater richness of analysis by indicating that in moving along this
axis, from products to services, both the involvement of the manufacturer increases, and the
'system complexity' increases. Services, therefore, imply - by the this typology - higher
manufacturer and greater system complexity than mere product offerings.
What this typology does is enable, in some loose way, a collation of different phenomena which
seem to exemplify a 'shift to services'. Mont (2004) quotes Stahel as offering a synthesis of what
the shift to services seems to be about. Stahel says the functional economy is one that

“optimises the use (or function) of goods and services and thus the management of existing
wealth (goods, knowledge, and nature). e economic objective of the functional economy is
to create the highest possible use value for the longest possible time while consuming as few
material resources and energy as possible. e functional economy is therefore more
sustainable, or dematerialised, than the present economy, which is focused on production as
its principal means to create wealth and material flow” (Stahel, 1997)

Somehow, in this, the key ideas appear to be a) the requirement of less products for the same
amount of welfare and b) the idea that some kind of low-materialisation service can replace a
high-materialisation product.

Parallel to this services paradigm, and to some extent integrated to it, is the proposed
phenomenon of sharing. ere is a distinctive sense in which this sharing idea operationalises
the service paradigm - more use of produced stuff - but it is also not obviously immediately
integrable to the environmental-resource, technical-economic character of the environmental
service agenda. Indeed while it has a premise in common with the service paradigm, 'more
efficient use' of goods, the promotion of sharing has a clear social focus, and indeed implies a
shift back towards more community/oriented modes of behaviour and consumption/
production, rather than a shift ahead to some more modern/seeming service paradigm.

ere is clearly a conceptual richness the service paradigm as presented by Stahel and as
developed in a 'sharing agenda', and some level of definition, but whether this is sufficient to
provide clarity and tractability is something we will explore further below.

2.1.3. Summary of Framing Ideas

So, what the agenda seems to amount to is this. On a deep scientific platform - robust in
principle in terms of anthropic resource flow accounting, even with a branch into ecological
energy flow study - of 'better use of resources' within the human system, the services approach
offers an apparent potential of 'more efficient use of products' and 'replacement of products'
with 'less materially-intensive services'. Typologies have been proposed which attempt to map
the various ways in which the shift to services relate to each other. is is supplemented by an
additional focus on 'sharing' which seems to satisfy some of the criteria of the shift to services,
i.e. products being more intensively used in some way.

2.2. Research
2.2.1. Status of research
Research on this basis may be said to have three aspects. ere is literature-based and concept
rich research which rehearses and offers insights into the scientific platform. Most research
involves some of this, if only to derive the justification for working on services, and some delves
into it in detail.

More actively, there is an emphasis on creating business process tools for facilitating the shift
from product-oriented business models to service-oriented models. Some of these are in-field
multi-year collaborations involving big businesses, many researchers and expectation of
application, e.g. MEPSS ([ref ]), and others (e.g. Wong 2004) are individual research projects on a
speculative basis. Others, e.g. ([Ehrenfeld et al]) attempt to link classic research and analysis to
real-world application.

Less ambitious, but also closer to actual application, are studies of real-life examples of service
systems in operation, from large-scale enterprises to small pilot projects. Large and medium
corporations known for pioneering service-system business models include Interface carpet
corporation ([ref ]), DuPont ([ref ]) and Mobility ([ref ]). Many other pilot projects have been
have developed specifically for research purposes (IIIEE [refs], [etc]).

2.2.2. Disciplinary approach

A unique feature of the services agenda is the way in which it has not found a natural home in
any one discipline. In so far as it is an extension of the resource flows agenda, tracking the
overall sustainability of anthropic consumption of physical resources, the emerging discipline of
industrial ecology has adopted ([ref from journals]) it. Business studies, if this is a real science
discipline, has some interest in the area, if primarily in terms of facilitating alternative business
models ([ref ]). e social sciences, including sociology and psychology, have contributed
somewhat to the study of changed behaviours and consumer attitudes, albeit not so much
focussing on services or sharing directly, but touching on broader, apparently related matters
such as 'downshifting' and lifestyle change. Mainstream economics has not really reached out to
this, and though alternative economics in particular ecological economics has included work of
this sort, it is under a very broad rubric of sustainability, without a conventional economic focus
(e.g. market efficiency, rational utility maximisation, etc). Ironically, the most influential work in
economics, looking at new definitions of efficient production based on sharing-systems, is done
by an economist ([Benkler]). Perhaps most innovatively, the design world has started to explore
the services area, with a lot of creative case studies and pilots involving community participation
and scenarios. ([RED, Dott]).

What none of the disciplines how done however is stabilise a core set of formal terms,
parameters, measures, and goals for the services project. is makes it extremely hard to see the
work as either integrated, or perhaps more crucial, cumulative and heuristic.

2.2.3. JM Mobility study

2.3. Why are services better than products?

To do more justice to the existing research platform, we may make an attempt to delineate
further the concrete bases on which a shift to services has been proposed as a sustainability
offering. We may identify three standard bases: 'Apparent Dematerialisation', 'Relative
Dematerialisation', and 'Smaller Commodity Stock'. Note that these approach routes are applied,
variously, to the kinds of specific product-service offerings that are tallied in the typologies
mentioned above: they are used to describe why and how services can be a good thing.

2.3.1. Apparent Dematerialisation

Work into the services shift tends to focus on the 'apparent dematerialisation' of a service
offering. Assuming the given pre-existence of a networked computer and a music-playing
device, the downloading of an album to the device via the computer is almost entirely
dematerialised per se - compared, that is, to the need for an individual journey to the shops, the
requirement for production-stage resources, the resources required in logistics and retailing,
and resources embedded in the media themselves. Similarly, a holiday to the Seychelles has a
dematerialised character, in the sense that the direct consumption by an individual consumer - a
purchase which they own, consume and discard, does not seem to be present. Each element of
the holiday - the transfers, the hotel, the beach, and so forth - seems to be durably present and,
in a strict marginal sense, undepleted (and therefore available for use) as a result of their
presence.

It is these kinds of phenomena that allow, prima facie, services to be offered up as a step towards
sustainability. Notably, however, there is no clear, agreed structure for measuring a defined
increase in sustainability, simply an 'apparent' dematerialisation of consumption through such
means; nor is there any natural method of promoting or generalising the servicisation trend
from this insight of dematerialisation.

2.3.2. Relative Dematerialisation

Another approach to the services paradigm is through using a classic economic measure, GDP,
and assessing the 'relative dematerialisation' of it per unit of value. is means calculating the
total physical requirement of measured economic activity, and dividing it by the total measured
value of that activity, in, say, tonnes per dollar. Such an approach has many powerful
characteristics. Firstly, it is doubly quantitative: it uses definable measures pertaining to
purchases, i.e. their resource intensity and their economic value. Secondly, it is highly
comparable, in that all purchases, or whatever product or service category can be viewed and
compared through a lens of relative dematerialisation. irdly, it is aggregatable, in that a whole
economies relative dematerialisation can be perceived through a total tally of resources and
economic product. Fourthly, it is - as a function of being based on standard measures - useable
in longitudinal study (i.e. performance over time can be monitored). Fifthly, and perhaps most
importantly, by including a value criterion, it offers a direct promise of achieving a core
challenge of sustainable consumption: maintaining welfare while reducing resource use.

Notably, relative dematerialisation at an aggregated level is already demonstrating key trends,

and providing insight for policy making. For example, it is demonstrable that at least at the level
of energy consumption (if not all factors of resource consumption), the U.S. economy has
started to exhibit relative dematerialisation since the 1970s ([ref ]), i.e. that each value unit of
economic production has required, year by year (on average), less energy to be created. is
suggests that production is becoming less energy intensive, and that further investment can
perhaps be made in efficient energy consumption in the production phase.

2.3.3. Smaller Commodity Stock

Another approach to the services paradigm involves focussing on the commodity stock as held
or accessed by a given group of individuals. If, for the purpose of mobility, 100 consumers own/
access 100 vehicles, clearly, ceteris paribus, 50 of the same vehicles servicing the needs of those
100 consumers offers, in principle, some kind of resource saving.

Mostly obviously, this is an approach taken in the 'private sharing' aspect of the shift to services,
but it can also be applied to the more technical, commercial services project (for example, in
commercial car-sharing). What it offers, again prima facie, is an apparent measurement method,
by which to demonstrate the desirability of the services paradigm. If a consumption system,
whether involving leasing of photocopiers, sharing of cars, washing services for computer chips
or clothes, uses a smaller commodity stock for the same body of consumers it can be considered
to be implementing something of the services paradigm.
2.4. Problems with standard methods
e standard methods mentioned above for proposing the shift to services each have a certain
clarity, and definitely inform research and policy driving a potential shift to services. However,
none of these is not sufficient to support a mainstreaming of the idea.

2.4.1. Apparent Dematerialisation: No measure or comparison

Apparent dematerialisation clearly implies a less materially intensive personal lifestyle. However,
the conceptual basis of this approach is unsystematic and its physical reality is not guaranteed.

In the first place, without any conceptual rigour it is unclear what is really implied by the shift to
services under the heading of apparent dematerialisation. ere is no obvious guidance on what
businesses or consumers can do differently other than consume more services, nor even any
measure - this is crucial - of in what way and to what extent that service-based consumption is
more sustainable than product-based, or how different service offerings may be better than
others.

Indeed what is clear is that while some services are genuinely low intensity, and while in all cases
the individual consumer is not responsible for all the resource consumption of a service offering,
often enough apparently 'dematerialised' consumption is in fact high, indeed unsustainable, in
resource intensity. at is to say, for example, that a jet holiday to the Seychelles is in many ways
unsustainable in its impact and resource intensity, however much an individual consumer is not
solely responsible for the associated impacts and resource consumption (through e.g. hotels and
flights), nor do they have a final material 'product' that they purchase, use and dispose.

What is needed is more concrete analysis and measure of the sustainability of a service
consumption paradigm.

2.4.2. Relative dematerialisation of GDP: Misleading, even perverse

Relative dematerialisation suggests that if the balance of overall GDP is shifted towards an
increasing portion of services, then per unit total GDP, the average amount of resources
required will be decreasing. Such a trend seems to imply sustainability (and is clearly better than
its opposite). is is quite high-powered analysis, and is likely to convince policy makers.

However, it is deeply flawed on one key basis. In a growth economy, which is how all modern
economies are managed to be, it can easily be the case that a relative dematerialisation is
achieved (i.e. less resources per unit of GDP) by an increasing share of services being purchased,
while absolute dematerialisation is not achieved (i.e. total amount of resources consumed does
not go down). is would happen if only the marginal growth - the extra GDP - was going to
services, but a core of expenditure was still going to product-based consumption. is, in fact,
appears to be what happens. e US economy is a relatively dematerialising economy - per unit
of GDP, according to WRI, it is less 'materialised' than 'poor countries' - but clearly the economy
is based on high, unsustainable levels of personal product consumption, and it is not absolutely
dematerialising, which is what is required for sustainability. Essentially, what is not clear in this
approach is the direct replacement of products with services - i.e. the rise of PSS - which is what
is assumed to be the sustainability transition most sought after, achieving absolute reduction in
resource use; instead we have something which we may call the service-economy transition
(SET) which may deceptively achieve relative dematerialisation, while not achieving absolute
reductions of resource use.
ere is also a perversity in play under a scenario of relative dematerialisation. It is that a shift to
services can also be achieved which results in a downturn in GDP, meaning that, in theory,
service-based consumption can be achieved while relative materialisation goes up not down. If
product sharing is considered a form of service-based consumption, and such sharing means
that less products are produced, and therefore less profits are made from production, the ironic
situation arises in which a step towards sustainability through services is achieved while GDP is
going down. is is not only antagonistic towards the concept of relative dematerialisation, it is
threatening to the assumption of economic growth generally.

As such relative dematerialisation, both because it masks unsustainable absolute materialisation,

and because it perversely militates against product sharing, is not a strong or clear measure for
the promotion of sustainable service based consumption.

2.4.3. Smaller Commodity Stock

A third approach to the services paradigm is a very concrete measure of in what way the shift to
services is a more sustainable method of consumption. is is to simply count the number of
persons per product in a consumption system. In a service-based consumption system, the
evidence is that there are less products in the system compared to a product-based system: the
commodity stock is smaller and therefore this is more sustainable (on the basis that there are
less resources being consumed).

Pragmatically, this is correct and an entirely viable way of calculating the relative sustainability
performance of competing consumption systems: when a full-lifecycle measure has been done
for the products in the system, including production and usage and disposal impacts, this metric
will give a comparative performance in resource consumption terms between service-based and
ownership-based consumption systems. However, this approach is in fact entirely defective to
guide a shift to service-based consumption - even while it will validate the increased
sustainability of such a shift - because it can give no guidance on how effective service-based
consumption is in terms welfare.

For example, if it is understood that a service-based consumption system which uses 200
washing machines for 1000 households is more sustainable than an ownership-based system
which requires a 1000 machines for a 1000 households, the trend implied is one of simply
reducing the number of machines per 1000 households to achieve sustainability. Clearly, this is
defective and indeed misleading: while 200 machines may service the washing needs of 1000
households as well as 1000 machines, while being more sustainable, 10 machines will not be able
to service these needs, even while the resource demands are less.

It may be the case that a social arrangement can be achieved whereby a group of consumers
agree to sacrifice some welfare in a consumption system where products are shared, but this is
not an outcome that is preferential, because it implies an appeal to moral and a reduction in
welfare. Indeed it breaks the ground premise that a service-based consumption system will not
require welfare to be sacrificed compared to a product-based system.

In effect, we are reminded that resource consumption cannot be reduced to zero, and any shift
to services must offer a measure of how effectively welfare is delivered, at the same times as
resource consumption is reduced. e measure of persons per product only tells us that less
products in society is 'more sustainable': but on reflection, this is banal knowledge, and we
cannot use it to guide us to an effective service-based consumption paradigm.
2.4.4. Summary
e three approaches listed above to promoting services are essentially flawed by the following
problems. ere is no clear conceptual package which allows a systematic approach to the
problem, and above all this means that it is not possible even conceptually to directly compare
product-based consumption to service-based consumption. is, replacing product
consumption with service consumption, would be the the pathway of effective change, if services
were inherently less resource-intensive. Secondly, there is no reliable measure of how much
more efficient in environmental terms service systems may be than anything else: relative
dematerialisation masks absolute materialisation and penalises sharing, and a metric of persons
per product, which is operative in a sharing context, gives no reliable indicator of at what level
products become too few to satisfy consumer needs and preferences. Again, reliable comparison
is crucially missing.

2.5. General Critiques

In order better to establish the real basis of a shift to services, it may be useful to clarify two
general limitations in the scientific guides supplied to environmental change efforts: one
environmental, the other economic.

2.5.1. Limits of environmental science

What, broadly, environmental science contributes to environmental sustainability is a

measurement of environmental impact. Such measures come in various forms, whether narrow
proxy measures (e.g. carbon concentrations in the atmosphere, as an index of climate change
potential, and thereby proxy for environmental impact), disaggregated measures (e.g. the MEA,
bundle of state-of-the-environment indicators), or aggregate measures (e.g. ecofootprinting,
which aggregates all environmental impacts to a single category of notional resource availability,
biocapacity).

Such measures are crucial in determining whether any aspect of human society is sustainable:
whether it is a product, a building, a lifestyle, a service, anything can be assessed in terms of its
environmental impact.

When there is a tacit assumption that the endeavour is simply to reduce the environmental load
of the human activity in question, or there is an assumption that two measured activities being
measured and compared are in all respects other than environmental equivalent, then
environmental science offers a clear steer towards sustainability.

However, if what is required is either an entire replacement of a particular activity, or

comparison of two activities which cannot be considered equivalent, the uni-dimensional aspect
of environmental impact measurement becomes a strict limit on the usefulness of of the science.
is is because, mostly specifically, a specific load of environmental impact in no way guarantees
a certain level of welfare, nor even a specific type of welfare: and what matters is not just
reducing environmental impact, but maintaining necessary (however defined) welfare.

e problem here is most manifest in situations where a number of alternatives present

themselves each of which has the same total environmental load. While environmental science
is uniquely capable of helping decide among apparently equivalent scenarios with differing
environmental loads, it is not useful in supporting decisions among apparently equivalent
scenarios with similar environmental loads. Indeed, it is not competent to judge whether two
situations with similar loads are otherwise comparable at all.
is means that when there is a likelihood that the welfare proposition of two different activities
is going to be somewhat different, a focus on their respective environmental performance is not
sufficient to guide behaviour, industrial production or policy down a suitable path. is is
because in reducing environmental load, which is desirable, one may achieve a reduction in
welfare that is unacceptable.

is, then, is the meta-challenge for the shift to services: to achieve a lower environmental load
while retaining welfare. is issue, of offering welfare equivalence while reducing environmental
load, is not taken sufficiently seriously by environmental science. In fact, environmental
scientists somehow fail to understand that though their efforts are crucial in guiding judgement
between equivalent activities of varying loads, they are not competent to propose further
guidance for activities with equivalent loads, since they may end up reducing welfare. Beyond
simply specifying, in short, activities that are inherently lower impact than a directly comparable
alternative, environmental science cannot directly guide change.

Environmental science has hereby, in fact, simply brought humankind back to the primary
insight of economic science: that there is no direct or obvious way of deciding how best to use
resources to achieve welfare (the 'allocation problem'), and as such the market becomes the
determinant of appropriate allocation. Note that the theory of the market offers the opportunity
to reduce resource consumption while retaining welfare. More specifically, we may say markets
are not systems for simply reducing resource consumption; they are systems for reducing
resource consumption in a welfare-efficent way.

e difficulty may be expressed as the 'economic problem' of environmental science: the lack of
guidance for how to maximise welfare, while reducing resource use. In the context of the
services issues, this economic problem manifests itself in the difficulty of environmental
scientists promoting services over products: even if resource intensity can be confirmed to be
equivalent or less, welfare outcomes cannot be guaranteed a priori, and thus guidance on this
issue seems to be limited from the outset. e apparent opportunity of smaller commodity
stock, as a putative guide to the services issue, is a clear case in point: it is not in any way clear
still less guaranteed that a smaller commodity stock for a given set of consumers guarantees
welfare outcomes, and thus this is not a reliable proposal.

2.5.2. Limits of economic science

e limit of environmental science, in the form of the economic, 'allocation' problem, lead
directly to the economic solution to the allocation problem: the market. If individuals, including
environmental scientists with their environmental impact assessments are not competent to
determine the best welfare options from a given set of activities, it becomes the job and
opportunity of the market institution to navigate a path between the conservation of resources
(for either environmental or financial reasons - or both if all costs are internalised) and welfare
acceptability (determined in practice by profitable sales).

However, economic science is itself harbouring a major overarching flaw when it comes to determining
welfare, and an important embedded flaw with reference specifically to services [use behaviour post
consumption].

What is understood in economics is that purchases in the marketplace under autonomous

conditions are revealers of preferences, indeed of the satisfaction of preferences: consumers buy
what they want, and thereby their preferences are satisfied. is is assumed to be, not
unreasonably, a pathway towards welfare: increase the amount of preferences that are satisfied
and one increases the amount of welfare that is achieved by the consumer. Even assuming that
preferences are infinite, and that welfare delivered through purchases is unlimited (a central but
problematic assumption of market economics), there is a deadly flaw in the assumption-chain
that autonomous purchases satisfy preferences, and thereby welfare is guaranteed.

All that an observer of the market in fact knows when observing an autonomous consumer
making a purchase is that the purchase is clearly satisfying some urge within the consumer.
Crucially, while this urge may be being satisfied autonomously, it may not arise autonomously.
us we may say divide the urges to consume into two categories: autonomous, which we may
call preferences, and non-autonomous, which we may call priorities. We may suggest that while
satisfaction of preference-urges increases welfare, satisfaction of priority-urges simply prevents
welfare from decreasing.

A better assumption about what is happening in a conventional market context is then perhaps
not that consumers are merely autonomously satisfying autonomous preferences, but that
consumers are autonomously satisfying both autonomous preferences and non-autonomous
priorities.

Herein lies the problem. e determinant, currently, of welfare growth in market economics is
considered to be the growth of autonomous purchase in the market place, themselves indexed
inevitably upon overall growth of the economy. e difficulty within this is not the concern that
welfare-through-preference-satisfaction does not rise linearly with purchases, but that
preference-satisfaction is not necessarily what is going on in these autonomous purchases.

If consumers are, through their purchases, satisfying priority-urges rather than preference-
urges, it becomes possible that a growth economy does not increase welfare because it is not
increasing the satisfaction of preferences (by which welfare is assured and grows),
3.
4.Some Clarifications
4.1.Clarification 0: The Structure of Sustainability
Conventionally, environmental sustainability is measured in terms of 'impacts' on the natural
environment. Popular measures, for example the ecological footprint, explicitly aggregate the
impact of all human activities in terms of 'consumption of biocapacity'.

As a steer for policy-making, an aggregate indicator is very welcome, and can guide decisions
across a wide range of issues, contributing to reductions of resource consumption and other
environmentally-damaging activities.

Scientifically, however, where viewing environmental sustainability from a perspective of

resource consumption, essential distinctions arise leading to a categorisation of sustainability
into three domains: impact management, demand management, and ethical transformation.

e first, most prominent domain of environmental sustainability is concerned with impact

management. is assumes a given set of human activities and attempts to mitigate the
environmental impact of these, without reducing resource consumption. Core actions under the
heading of impact management include pollution reduction, scientific conservation of resource
stocks (including substitution of material sources), and preservation of natural species and
areas.

e second, emerging domain of environmental sustainability deals with demand management.

is does not assume the activities resulting from which impacts on the environment arise: it
seeks to interrogate these activities, and look for ways to reduce demand for the resources and
thereby reduce impacts arising from production and consumption of such resources, without
elminating the the activities altogether.

e third, outlying domain of environmental sustainability deals with ethical transformation.

is is the most radical of the three aspects of sustainability, and it raises the question of
whether humans cannot and should not change their behaviour on strictly ethical grounds. Two
ethical grounds present themselves: first, whether humans 'need' what they are consuming, or
whether they are being 'greedy' by consuming such things; second, whether they have the 'right'
to cause the human and natural impacts they are causing through their consumption.

4.2.Clarification 1: What does consumption mean?

RC vs EC: Not clearly an entropy argument; not clearly an economic argument. Value is elusive.
PC vs US: not-equivalent. Ownership is not relevant.
What is sustainable?

4.3.Clarification 2: What kind of services?

Carpets
Hire
Washing service
Download

Distinguish: RP/UE/WE

Impact/Demand/Ethics
> Demand is consumption issue; different categories

Support services?

Ownership
Agency
Welfare
Scale

Services:
Confusion of PC and UC, ownership with welfare
PC not required for US, conceptual shift to understand all is services
Services categorised as access (ownership is expedited access, apparently), and function.

Ownership: Variable
Agent: Different agent possibilities
Scale: Tends to influence ownership structure

4.4.Clarification 3: Why do services make things better?

Specific target
Amount of total R allocated to products and use
Assessment of R use for industry that would be reduced in service context.

Systematic approach
Demand management into components: to UE, FS
!! Measuring lack of use

4.5.Clarification 4: How to really measure Use Efficiency?

Corrections to UE calc:
More efficient machines?
Different usage patterns?
Longer/shorter lives?

4.6.Clarification 5: Repositioning UE in relation to existing

work
Not RP!
Not WE! (so not an agency or welfare question)

Agnostic as to ownership.

Options for optimising UE

Social barrier?
Ownership
Convenience

Parameters of welfare

Concept/Content
Access
Organisation

Measure!
Design!
Optimise!

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Conventionally, this leads to a three fold array of policy options. e first, and politically the
most preferable option, is to create much more resource-efficient industrial production systems,
which do not interfere with the consumer experience, or the functioning of the market economy
on which modern consumer experiences are based, using various market, fiscal, regulation and
information tools. is approach can deliver the same quantity of products and services, and
indeed economic wealth, with less resource input. e dynamics of this policy approach are well
understood, even if it is not clear how the scale of resource-efficiency gains will be achieved in
the timeframes of change required (indeed mandated). is may be called a 'production' or
'production efficiency' approach to sustainable resource consumption.

Secondly, consumers can decide to change their consumption behaviours to consume less
goods, and to redefine their definition of 'welfare' such that less consumption is not experienced
as a downturn in welfare. is approach is considered quite marginal, with the role of policy and
research somewhat limited. Indeed, governments consider this risky on the economic level and
moralistic on the political level, and will not pioneer it. is may be called the 'consumer' or
'consumer sufficiency' approach.

irdly - and this is an option only implementable, and even then eschewed (but not ignored), in
authoritarian states - governments can regulate to limit either in production or goods/services
purchase the consumption of physical resources. is may be called the 'regulated' approach.

Each of these has limits that has been documented, and thus further approaches are welcome to
maximise opportunities for sustainable consumption. Systematically creating