Market and non-market determinants of private consumption and their impacts on the environment

Abstract

The view of consumption as an activity combining market and non-market elements with the aim of attaining life-enjoyment targets allows one to focus on the social and institutional determinants of the border between market and non-market components of the consumption process and to consider the interrelations of market and non-market domains of social life as a possible source of the environmental degradation which derives from consumption activities. In this paper, an analytical framework is proposed in which the view of consumption as a social process and the neo-Ricardian theory of prices and profits are combined to yield an evaluation of consumer efficiency and of its environmental effects. The paper argues that the social and institutional framework in which consumption is embedded significantly determines the impact of human activities on the natural environment and that environmental degradation is intimately connected with a distortion in the consumption process towards a predominance of market relations and an excess of labour in industrial society. Two examples (household energy conservation and private transportation) illustrate the analytical framework and suggest the importance of redrawing the border between market and non-market domains of social life in environmental policy.