American Academy of Political and Social Science
Does Changing a Light Bulb Lead to Changing the World? Political Action and the Conscious Consumer Author(s): MARGARET M. WILLIS and JULIET B. SCHOR Source: The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 644, Communication, Consumers, and Citizens: Revisiting the Politics of Consumption (November 2012), pp. 160-190 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. in association with the American Academy of Political and Social Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23316148 Accessed: 31-03-2017 17:17 UTC
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This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms As the prevalence of "conscious" consumption has grown, questions have arisen about its relationship to political action. An influential argument holds that political consumption individualizes responsibility for environmental degradation and "crowds out" genuine forms of activism. While European and Canadian empirical research contradicts this perspective, finding that conscious consumption and political engagement are positively connected, no studies of this relationship have been conducted for the United States. This article Does Changing presents ordinary least squares (OLS) regression mod els for two datasets, the 2004 General Social Survey and a detailed survey of approximately 2,200 conscious a Light Bulb consumers conducted by the authors, to assess the nature of the relationship between conscious consump Lead to tion and political activism. The authors find that meas ures of conscious consumption are significantly and positively related to political action, even when control Changing the ling for political involvement in the past. The results World? suggest that greater levels of political consumption are positively related to a range of political actions.
Political Action Keywords: political consumerism; ethical consump tion; activism, sustainable consumption; and the political participation Conscious Consumer Vote and with you your can change dollars." the world.""Change Consuming a light bulb to effect social change has become common place in the American landscape, promoted by both NGOs and corporations. A 2008 Harris Poll found that 53 percent of the population By engaged in a consumer action to reduce their MARGARET M. WILLIS personal ecological impact. That same year, and researchers at Yale found that 34 percent buy JULIET B. SCHOR cotted (i.e., "reward[ed] companies by buying their products"), and 25 percent boycotted products at least once1 (Maibach, Roser Renouf, and Leiserowitz 2009). Similar trends have been identified in Europe, where in 2004, 34 percent of the populations of twenty European countries reported buycotting or boycotting products (Neilson and Paxton 2010). In a neoliberal era with a corporate and elite-dominated state, using market-driven
DOI: 10.1177/0002716212454831
ANNALS, AAPSS, 644, November 2012
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consumer campaigns to achieve sustainability and social justice goals has become a popular strategy of progressive social change organizations. While the hegemonic role of shopping in contemporary culture renders political con sumption a commonsense form of action, scholars' attempts to theorize and evaluate these efforts show them to be more complex than the everyday mes sages offered to the public. As the articles in this volume show, it is neither obvious nor straightforward that a society can consume its way into social jus tice or environmental sustainability. And yet political consumption remains an intriguing development, especially when publics are disaffected or disengaged with politics-as-usual. We begin this article by raising a number of contentious issues in the litera ture. In particular, we dissect the citizen-consumer dichotomy that has struc tured much of the scholarly work on political consumption, arguing against the identification of the consumer market with individual action and the state with collective action. Then we turn to the models of social change that underlie research and practice in the field. We differentiate simple "accre tionist" models that conceptualize change as coming from the sum of indi vidual actions and accounts that see political consumption as connected to political activism and mobilization. Here we take on the common view that political consumption is an individualized action that displaces collective action (Maniates 2002; Szasz 2007; T. M. Smith 1998; Heath and Potter 2004; Johnston 2008; see also Carrier 2008). This hypothesis has been resonant in the U.S. and Canadian contexts, given the prominence of individualism and the strong neoliberal and antistate ideology of the past 30 years. The alternate view sees political consumption as one among a larger repertoire of strategies and actions oriented toward social change. This view is supported by a num ber of qualitative studies that find that individuals see their actions as con nected to larger political movements (Shaw 2007; Clarke et al. 2007; Seyfang 2006; Connolly and Prothero 2008). We present evidence from two sources, the 2004 General Social Survey (GSS) and what we believe is the first large scale U.S. survey of conscious consumers, which we collected in 2008. Our findings contradict the view that engaging in political consumption under mines, displaces, or substitutes for conventional collective and political involvement. 2
Margaret M. Willis is a doctoral student in sociology at Boston College. She has an MA in sociology from, Boston College and an MEd in community development and action from Vanderbilt University.
Juliet B. Schor is a professor of sociology at Boston College. Her most recent book is True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans Are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically-Light, Small-Scale, High-Satisfaction Economy (Penguin 2011). She is also the author of The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure (Basic Books 1992) and The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don't Need (Basic Books 1998).
NOTE: We would like to thank the Center for a New American Dream for their support and administration of the survey, and we would also like to thank William Gamson, Natalia Sarkisian, Sarah Babb, and members of the Yale Sociology Department Colloquium for helpful comments. We are also grateful to Amoiy Starr for her work in developing the conscious con sumption survey.
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Citizens and Consumers: Complicating the Binaries
A growing literature has explored the role of fair trade, organic foods, and other green and ethical products as solutions to environmental and social justice issues (Jaffee 2007; Connolly and Prothero 2008; Seyfang 2009; Micheletti 2003). Various terms have been applied to these alternative consumer practices: ethical consumption (Shaw and Shiu 2003; Barnett et al. 2005; Thompson and Coskuner Balli 2007; Adams and Raisborough 2008; Carrier 2008), political consumerism (Neilson and Paxton 2010; Andersen and Tobiasen 2004; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005; Shah et al. 2007; Jacobsen and Dulsrud 2007; Micheletti 2003), critical consumerism (Sassatelli 2006), alternative hedonism (Soper 2007), and sustainable consumption (Southerton, Warde, and Hand 2004; Seyfang 2006, 2009). In this article, we use the terms political consumption or, more frequently, conscious consumption, in part because the latter is one that groups themselves have adopted. In our survey, described below, we define conscious consumption as "any choice about products or services made as a way to express values of sus tainability, social justice, corporate responsibility, or workers' rights and that takes into account the larger context of production, distribution, or impacts of goods and services. Conscious consumption choices may include forgoing or reducing consumption or choosing products that are organic, eco-friendly, fair trade, local, or cruelty-free." Whatever the terminology, much of the foregoing literature operates with three related pairs of binary oppositions: citizen/consumer, collective/individual, and public/private. The first, and most prevalent, is the distinction between a citi zen and a consumer. Traditional views see these as two distinct roles in which the former is by definition about self-interested behavior, and the latter involves act ing for and with others (Johnston 2008; Maniates 2002; see also Soper 2007; Zulan and Maguire 2004). In some of these views, citizen behavior is valorized as being capable of bringing about real change, because it occurs in the realm of the state, whereas consumer behavior is weak and ineffective, because it only takes place in the market. A related binary is individual versus collective action. Consumer action is seen by definition as individualized, autonomous, and under taken in a solitary way (Johnston 2008; Maniates 2002; Szasz 2007). By contrast, political activity is collective, solidaristic, and capable of effecting change. Third, the consumer sphere is understood as a private space, in contrast to the state, which is understood as public. While some authors have adopted a hybridized version of a citizen-consumer, indicating that a person is engaging in citizenship acts while consuming (Zulan and Maguire 2004), this formulation does not fun damentally challenge the basic oppositions that structure the literature. We argue that the conflation of the market with consumption, the individual and the private, mistakes a contemporary neoliberal ideal for an actually existing, even intrinsic, characteristic. As such, it represents a category error. Are con sumer markets inherently apolitical? One need only think back to the famous consumer actions of the early twentieth century, when labor activists relied on
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widespread moral values to fight over the price of bread, housing, and other basic needs. Similarly, around the world today, people are fighting for access to food and other basic commodities, using mass protests, organized demonstrations, and "food riots" to make their case. Food reminds us that the provision of consumer goods is more often than not organized by, or at least regulated by, states, which makes the idea of a "private" consumer market every bit as fictional as its close cousin, the "free" market. Whether we are considering food, energy, housing, or even electronics, travel, and tourism, the role of the state in organizing, regulat ing, and structuring the markets for consumption is considerable virtually every where in the world. Similarly, the idea that consumption is an individual act, in contrast to citizen activity, fails to recognize the range of actions that take place both in the state and the consumer market. Not only is consumption social and collective in obvious ways, such as the prevalence of people shopping in groups, or consuming together, but, as the work of many consumer researchers has made clear, people s under standings of, motivations for, and conduct of consumption is deeply and pro foundly social. Fashion itself would be unintelligible if this were not true. The same is true for culturally patterned eating, as well as many other realms of con sumption. The only discipline that understands consumption as an individual act of self-interest is modern economics, which, for largely political reasons, models consumers as autonomous individuals whose choices fail to affect others. The poli tics here is that all the favored neoliberal conclusions against government inter vention in the market no longer hold once the models are modified to allow interdependence of consumers. But economic models of consumption are per haps the least illuminating of all the understandings that scholars have to offer. By contrast, politics, while often other-directed, is also often structured by individual actions. Indeed, the archetypal political act—voting—is a practice undertaken by individuals.3 Similarly, citizen-behavior, such as donating to politi cal campaigns, can be either other-directed or self-interested, as the aftermath of Citizens' United surely shows. Are Super-PAC donators David Koch, Sheldon Adelson, and Foster Freiss acting to exercise their civic and collective responsibili ties or to advance self-interest? Taking the long view, we are reminded that state institutions that we think of as public, such as the judiciary, were once far more privatized, in the sense that they were accessed and paid for by private individuals. More generally, the establishment of the state as a site of public interest and col lective behavior is a significant historical achievement, fought for and won through decades of struggle, rather than an inherent quality of government. Indeed, the current moment is one in which the "public-ness" of the state has been seriously threatened, as individuals, corporations, and private interests attempt to vanquish the collective nature of the state to turn it into an instrument of private gain. The historical view is also useful for thinking about consumption. In the United States, the post-World War II period was one in which consumer markets were uniquely and explicitly depoliticized, in the sense of being constructed as outside politics (Cohen 2003; see also Schor forthcoming). Liberal ideology declared consumer tastes as off-limits to social critique, a personal choice with no
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social context. Paired with the public-ness of the state, this formulation repre sents the core ideology of social democracy, rather than a fixed quality of either sphere. Indeed, the myth that consumption is apolitical is not without effect. It reproduces the real depoliticization noted above and is part of what allows cor porations to reproduce practices that violate the ethical norms of the citizenry as well as undermine planetary sustainability. It is just this context that has produced the recent upsurge in conscious con sumer activity. Practitioners of conscious consumption aim not only to achieve instrumental political goals through their actions, but to restructure the workings of consumer markets. They are attempting to moralize markets, by forcing pro ducers and consumers to make new calculations about the consequences of their practices and choices that take into account environmental and social criteria. In this sense, the conscious consumption movement can be seen as demanding a more holistic or integrated perspective than the separate spheres formulation of social democracy, and one that is more in line with earlier notions of the "moral economy" (E. P. Thompson 1971). More generally, the citizen versus consumer dichotomy, even in its hybridized citizen-consumer form, conflates sites and practices (for a discussion along these lines, see Bowles and Gintis 1986). Sites, such as the market, the state, or the workplace, are places. At these sites, people engage in practices, such as buying, voting, or producing. Sites can be and usually are structured by practices, and normally sites operate with different practices (e.g., social relations in the work place differ from those that predominate in the modern family). The practices that structure the operation of sites are historically contingent and always socially constructed. Once we correctly differentiate between sites and practices, we can avoid the trap of essentialism (i.e., the market is like this, the state is like this). Furthermore, we can see that much social change comes about when practices from one site are transported to another, thereby destabilizing the structural reproduction of that site. For example, in the 1970s, workers brought democratic practices from their experiences in the state into the workplace, thereby chal lenging the authority structure of the firm and leading to labor unrest (Bowles and Gintis 1986). Similarly, the consumer market was restructured after World War II to take democratic practices out, by constructing it as a privatized area without rights of free speech, consumer power, or an integral connection between retail workers and consumers. This is the structure that the political consumption movement is attempting to undo.
Conscious Consumption and Activism: Crowding Out or Crowding In?
The exhortations with which we started the article ("Vote with your dollars," "Change a light bulb and you can change the world") represent one model of social or environmental transformation: the actions of many individuals, however small, added together, can change the world. This "aggregationist" approach
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tends to be favored by corporations who wade into this territory, as well as larger mainstream NGOs. It is also a kind of "folk model" that one can find in public discussions of change (Harker 2008). It retains a commonsense plausibility in a world where consumer actions are ideologically constructed as voluntary, conse quential, and sovereign. We term this the naive aggregationist model, because it fails to take into account concentrations of power, structural factors, or other obstacles, instead seeing consumer action like a tsunami that can roll over what ever is in its path. A new version of the aggregationist model is gaining adherents on account of its similarity to online activity, in which a large number of people following rela tively weak signals (e.g., an email or Facebook posting), are moved to take action, both offline and online. Models from complexity science, including agent-based approaches to cultural evolution, rely on decentralized individual actors to pro duce change (Olmerud 1998). Social network models, which are sometimes used to understand consumer behaviors, are close cousins (Christakis and Fowler 2009). These models are hardly naive in the way we have characterized the sim ple aggregationist approach. In fact, they are extremely sophisticated and suggest ways in which individual actions, including market action, may lead to system wide outcomes. However, with some exceptions (e.g., Buenstorf and Cordes 2008), scholars have not yet exploited the power of these models to understand the transmission of sustainable or ethical behaviors. Models of complex systems have also not permeated the academic study of social movements. Conventional understandings of social change are that it results from organized groups engaging in strategic action. And, importantly, social change relies on activists who get heavily involved in their movements. While successful social movements often rely on a large number of people who take small actions (such as voting or boycotting), broad participation is typically a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. Whether in its naive or sophisticated form, these aggregationist accounts have drawn skepticism from a number of scholars. An influential view holds that indi vidual consumer action substitutes for, or "crowds out," civic and collective action (Carrier 2008; Szasz 2007; Maniates 2002; Smith 1998). Some scholars argue that it is definitionally self-interested and therefore anticollective (Johnston 2008). Indeed, the individualist "plant a tree, ride a bike" agenda (Maniates 2002) is argued to be not merely ineffectual but detrimental because it distracts awareness and energy away from activity that would have substantive impact; it is an "anti-politics machine" (Carrier 2008, 46) that displaces collective political action and leads people to see the marketplace as the primary arena for change. Andrew Szasz (2007) makes an even stronger argument, portraying the consumption of natural or organic products as a retreat to safety, what he calls an "inverted quarantine" that is motivated by a desire to protect oneself and is contrary to civic or political motivations. In the view of Szasz, and others in this camp, the act of buying bottled water or organic food removes the motivation to press for collective action that would eliminate unsustainable
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practices at the production level through state regulation. Consumer behavior is understood as limiting, by providing a false, individual approach to a struc tural problem. There are other grounds for skepticism about the efficacy of political con sumption. Mazar and Zhong (2010), on the basis of experimental evidence with students, find that taking one "green" action licenses unethical subsequent behavior. Apparently the human capacity for morality, as for political motivation, is quickly extinguished by the very act of consumption. Similarly, Devinney, Auger, and Eckhardt (2010) label "ethical consumption" a "myth," on the grounds that while consumers "say" they care about social justice or the environment, their willingness to pay more for products is rather limited. The alternative perspective argues that political or conscious consumption should be conceptualized as a new form of civic and political engagement and that it is one of a variety of mechanisms for participation that is more loosely organized, lifestyle-oriented, and spontaneous than traditional forms of civic participation (Melucci 1989; Micheletti 2003; Stolle and Hooghe 2004; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005; Neilson and Paxton 2010). In this view, political consumption "crowds in," or encourages, political activism (to borrow a term from the economics literature on the effects of budget deficits and savings). Conscious consumers are highly active, assume responsibility across social sites, and exercise both autonomy and solidarity in a postmodern context where con sumption is increasingly important personally and globally. The findings of sev eral empirical studies suggest that many conscious consumers adopt this perspective, framing their consumption as political and viewing their choices as an effective mechanism for "voting with their dollars" (Shaw 2007; Seyfang 2006; Webb 2007). Some scholars contend that political consumption can help to renew democ racy by deepening awareness and activism (Micheletti 2003), or can serve as a pathway to various forms of collective participation for "ordinary people" (Barnett et al. 2005, 45). Moreover, social movement organizations often play a substantial role in mobilizing individuals to take collective action through the consumer market by raising awareness and issuing direct calls to action (Barnett et al. 2005; Micheletti and Stolle 2007; Schor forthcoming), or providing a frame through which consumer actions can foster collective identity (Moore 2006; Barnett et al. 2005) and signal demands to producers (Holzer 2006). Other authors discuss the effect in the opposite direction: social and political engagement may encourage more conscious consumption (Neilson and Paxton 2010), and in practice the effect is plausibly bidirectional. Taken together, this view is quite different from the aggregationist one, as it understands political consumption as one in a toolkit of actions available to peo ple and groups that are trying to make social change. It emphasizes the impor tance of organizations and institutions. The empirical literature, for example, identifies church groups and labor organizations as key actors in promoting and organizing political consumption.
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The critics of political consumption, who mainly hail from North America, have typically not supported their position with data beyond the anecdotal. However, when one does consider the existing empirical evidence, we see that the literature has to date found positive associations among various forms of political and social engagement. However, all the studies to date are from Europe or Canada (Forno and Ceccarini 2006; Micheletti and Stolle 2005; Str0msnes 2005; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005; Andersen and Tobiasen 2004; Tindall, Davies, and Mauboules 2003). Furthermore, these studies find that conscious consumers do not see their consumption as the only (or best) solution to climate change and social injustices (Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005; Str0msnes 2005). Nor do they understand their actions as individualized and atomized. Rather, conscious consumers tend to have a nuanced view of their actions as politically and ethically motivated and to regard them as extensions of lifestyles, social networks, and civic and political action (Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005; Seyfang 2006; Shaw 2007; Clarke et al. 2007; Webb 2007; Leitch 2003; Gilg, Barr, and Ford 2005; Connolly and Prothero 2008). Conscious consumers report a range of intersecting motives related to health, safety, and home (Shaw et al. 2005) as well as prosocial, environ mental, and justice values (Gilg, Barr, and Ford 2005; Shaw et al. 2005). While these studies are interesting, in some cases, the samples have specifically screened for activism, making their findings unsuitable as answers to the general question of the relationship between activism and political consumption. There are far fewer accounts of American conscious consumers, and those that have been done have not focused on the relationship between citizenship, or activism, and consumption. However, two studies are worth noting. Thompson and Coskuner-Balli (2007) found that members of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) schemes reported that their participation in the CSA was transformative and influenced an expansion of their alternative consumption practices to spheres other than food. Brown s (2009) study of fair trade outlet promoters and consumers found that moral discourses were activated in the process of selling and purchasing these "ethical" commodities. Of course, even if we find considerable overlap between political and con sumer actions, we must be cautious not to simplistically conflate the citizen and consumer roles (Sassatelli 2006; Micheletti 2003; Holzer 2006; Schudson 2007; Seyfang 2009; Jacobsen and Dulsrud 2007). Individual actors may or may not attribute reflexive political meaning to any given act of consumption, and even if it is considered to be political, consumption is typically polysemic, driven by potentially divergent and conflicting motives, which makes it difficult to form coherent collective identities and actions in the consumer sphere (Black and Cherrier 2010; Sassatelli 2006; Schudson 2007). Interestingly, Sassatelli (2006) asks whether the conscious consumption framing occurs among consumers largely as a reproduction of the slogans offered by scholars or marketers, and suggests that the shopping-voting link is becoming an increasingly explicit and common normative frame. Furthermore, to equate consumption and political action may portray consumption as more rationally and cognitively determined
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than it is, given that consumption is deeply embedded in social, cultural, and emotional contexts4 (Sassatelli 2006; Schudson 2007). Finally, we should note that the debate about the relation between conscious consumption and political and social engagement relates to broader questions about the nature of change in capitalist society and whether the logic of capital ism leads necessarily to individualization and the cooptation of the potential of political movements (Heath and Potter 2004). While we are doubtful about this view, it is a larger question than we can fully address here. However, we would like to address briefly the cooptation thesis. This view assumes that consumers cannot transform corporations and busi ness entities, and that resistance is ultimately commodified. We would argue that the strong cooptation view makes a similar but inverse mistake to that committed by neoliberal theories of absolute consumer sovereignty. The latter assume unlimited consumer power and powerless business entities. Corporations must bend to the will of their customers. In the cooptation thesis, the theory is inverted. Consumers' resistance is wholly incorporated by corporations, sold back to them, and made ineffective. But an inverted theory is isomorphic with the theory itself and, therefore, ultimately quite similar. We believe neither of these extremes is satisfactory. Consumers and businesses are in a dialectical and historically contingent relationship with businesses, and over time they change in relation to each other. Douglas Holt's (2002) account of the social backlash against corporate conformity and Madison Avenue's cultural authority is an excellent example of this dialectic. As a result of the backlash, advertising and marketing practice changed, and consumers had more ability to make meaning in this field. (Of course, as Holt argues, this did not displace capitalism or con sumer culture.) A more recent example is the conflict between Whole Foods Market (WFM) and its critics (Schor forthcoming; Pollan 2006). In contrast to the approach of Johnston (2008), we would argue that WFM is in a continual dialogue with its critics in the food movement and that it is repeatedly forced to transform its practices. Furthermore, its presence in the food retailing space has forced its competitors to respond by offering organic, local, and non genetically modified food (GMO) alternatives to industrialized food. At the same time, it is also gaining monopoly power, organizing supply chains, and exerting enormous power on the production and consumption of food. The large point is that the market, similar to all other sites of social practice, is a space of contestation and change, where there may be structural imbalances of power but not preordained outcomes. This is the context in which we interpret the findings of our empirical research (see below). We find that those who engage in conscious consumption are involved in a project of transformation directed toward both the market and the state. We do not believe that our survey respondents' optimism about the efficacy of their projects is misplaced. However, along with those who are skepti cal of this pathway, we do recognize the powerful structural obstacles to chang ing capitalism that are occluded in the naive aggregationist models.
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Data and Methodology
Our review of the literature led us to conclude that the absence of empirical studies on the United States is an important lacuna that should be addressed. Europe and Canada are politically different from the United States, and findings of complementarity in consumer culture and political engagement in the former cannot be assumed to hold true in the latter. We therefore turn to two large-scale datasets to test the hypothesis that conscious consumption displaces forms of social and political engagement, using measures of both traditional political action as well as newer, more informal forms of engagement within our depend ent variable scale. When controlling for other factors, we test whether conscious consumption is a significant covariate of sustainability activism. Our analysis employs two sources of data from U.S. samples.5 The first is the 2004 GSS, and our primary variables of interest come from the special Citizenship Module for that year (Davis et al. 1972-2008). With the GSS, our intention is to establish whether there is a general relationship between conscious consumption and activism in a nationally representative sample; however, the measure of con scious consumption available in the GSS is crude (as detailed below). The data for the second analysis come from the 2008 Center for a New American Dream (CNAD) survey on conscious consumption, which was written, piloted, and administered by the authors in collaboration with Amory Starr. The CNAD analy sis adds greater specificity to the measures of conscious consumption and includes several additional control variables that were not available in the GSS, such as measures of previous political engagement. Following the recruitment strategy used by a number of authors who have studied conscious consumers (Connolly and Prothero 2008; Shaw et al. 2005; Shaw and Shiu 2003; Tindall, Davies, and Mauboules 2003), we sought a purpo sive sample of individuals who identify to some degree as "conscious consumers" and found them through CNAD, an ecologically oriented national nonprofit organization.6 CNADs email list, consisting of about 146,000 unique email addresses, served as the sampling frame. People joined this email list through a variety of Web outreach campaigns and are not members of the organization.' There are a number of Web sites that assist conscious consumers with updated information about ecological impact, new technologies, and innovative practices. The "Conscious Consumer" (now called "Consumer Marketplace") segment of the CNAD Web site was one of the earliest devoted to providing information on sustainable and socially just products. While CNAD supports a broader vision for systemic change and promotes some activism in communities, its Web content is heavily focused on consumer practices. The survey included nearly one hundred questions about consumer and activ ist behaviors and motives. It was administered online with support from CNAD, using the open-source survey tool LimeSurvey in August 2008. Of the 18,800 email invitations to participate in the survey that were sent to valid email addresses, 2,271 surveys were initiated (12 percent response rate). While the
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sample was purposive, the large sample size suggests that the findings are not simply anecdotal (following Shaw and Shiu 2003). The respondents also varied substantially in the degree to which they engaged in conscious consumer prac tices (see Table A2 in the appendix).
Variables
Dependent variable: Activism scale. For both datasets, an activism scale was created to measure the extent to which the respondents engage in activities that are considered to be part of a repertoire of both more traditional political citizen ship, such as voting or contacting politicians (Putnam 2000; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995), and activities that are elements in building and sustaining social movements, such as taking part in festivals or symbolic actions (Melucci 1989, 1996). See Appendix Tables A1 and A2 for a listing and summary statistics of all variables included in the activism scales, and Tables A3 and A4 for a summary of the constructed scale. For the CNAD sample, all the activism items specifically refer to action on "conscious consumption causes,"8 since the degree to which conscious consumption specifically detracts from consumer-related activism is of primary importance. The GSS questions, however, do not specify the cause for activism. The CNAD activism scale, therefore, may underestimate activism rela tive to the GSS activism scale.
Conscious consumption variables and scales. The GSS included only one item that captures a dimension of conscious consumption: whether respondents had "boycotted, or deliberately bought, certain products for political, ethical or envi ronmental reasons." This is similar to the item from the European Social Survey used by Neilson and Paxton (2010) to model political consumption. See Appendix Table A3 for a summary. This is a limited measure of conscious consumption, however. It fails to meas ure the frequency of buycotting or boycotting (Neilson and Paxton 2010; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005). More detailed information was gathered about consumption practices in the CNAD survey, where respondents were asked how consistently (on a scale ranging from 0 = never, 1 = very inconsistently, to 7 = very consistently) they engage in eighteen conscious consumption practices. These items are summarized in Appendix Table A2. Scales were constructed from these eighteen items using three different schemes (see Appendix Table A4). First, an overall consistency measure was constructed using all eighteen items. The scores in this scale indicate both breadth (across all the different items) and depth (the level of consistency) in the respondents' conscious consumption actions. In the second conscious consump tion measure, subscales were created for items within each sector: energy, trans portation, water, food, goods, and services (e.g., dry cleaning, investing, etc.). In the third measure, items were grouped by whether the actions reduced the respondents' overall purchases in the market (e.g., reducing overall energy use or
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growing one's own food) or the actions simply displaced conventional purchases with alternative purchases (e.g., purchasing local or organic food or taking part in eco-friendly services). Neilson (2010) finds differences between boycotters and buycotters in the sample from the European Social Survey. While it is not pos sible to separate buycotting and boycotting in the GSS data, this is an attempt to do so with the CNAD sample.
Information and communication scale. Various authors have found that infor mation and communication are significant predictors of political and social involvement (Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995; Neilson and Paxton 2010; Shall et al. 2007). While there are no relevant measures available for the GSS respond ents on information and communication, the CNAD survey included several questions about respondents' sources of information and pathways for communi cation about conscious consumption (see Appendix Table A2 for a summary of items and Appendix Table A4 for a description of the scale).
Other independent variables. For a complete summary of all variables included in the GSS and CNAD models, see Appendix Tables A3 and A4. Both models contain standard9 sociodemographic variables: age, gender, race, income, educa tion, parents' education, number of children, and marital status. The CNAD sample also adds self-ratings of time pressure; security of income; and whether the respondent lives in a city, suburb, small town, or rural area. Additionally, variables corresponding to the respondents history of political involvement and conscious consumption activity were included in the CNAD model (but were unavailable for the GSS sample). Aspects of the respondent's history of involvement, including a rating of overall political activity five years ago, were included as an attempt to control for previous activism and isolate the relationship between current levels of conscious consumption and current levels of political involvement. Ideally, longitudinal data would be used to analyze whether conscious consumption displaces other forms of social and political engagement. However, since we currentiy have only cross-sectional data, we can look at only the effect of conscious consumption on activism, holding self reported measures of prior political engagement constant. See Table A4 in the appendix for a full description of these variables.
Analytic methods
For both datasets, ordinary least squares (OLS) regressions were estimated with the activism scales as the dependent variables. All data management and analysis procedures were conducted with Stata/IC 10.1. Missing data were excluded list wise for the GSS analysis. There was a notable amount of missing data for the CNAD survey, however,10 and an analysis of the pattern of missing data11 revealed that using multiple imputation would be beneficial for estimating parameters (Allison 2002). Therefore, Multiple Imputation by Chained Equations (MICE) was used,12 and the combined results of ten imputed datasets are presented below.
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In the models presented below, the assumptions of linearity, normality of residuals, and heteroscedasticity were met, and the effect of multivariate outliers and multicollinearity13 were assessed and found to be minimal. Where applica ble, the appropriateness of treating ordinal variables as continuous was assessed, and dummy variables were used as an alternative when necessary. A number of potential interaction terms were tested; however, no theoretically interesting interactions were significant.
Results
Characteristics of the samples
To better understand the characteristics of these two samples, we conducted two sets of comparisons. First, we compared the respondents of the CNAD sur vey to GSS respondents who have "boycotted, or deliberately bought, certain products for political, ethical or environmental reasons" in the past year (i.e., buycotted or boycotted in the past year). Then we compared the GSS buycotters or boycotters to the rest of the GSS sample who had not buycotted or boycotted in the past year (see Table 1). The disproportionate number of female, highly educated, high-income respondents who buycott or boycott in the GSS sample is even higher in the CNAD sample, mirroring findings in other studies of conscious consumption (Neilson and Paxton 2010; Micheletti and Stolle 2005; Brecard et al. 2009; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005; Tindall, Davies, and Mauboules 2003). Buy/ boycotters in the GSS sample also have much higher rates than non-buy/boycotters in the GSS sample of donating to political or social causes and contacting officials. While the percentage of the CNAD sample who have contacted officials is signifi cantly higher, they have a slightly lower rate of donating as compared to buy/ boycotters in the GSS sample. Other differences between the CNAD sample and the GSS buy/boycotters, such as the greater number of respondents who are mar ried or who do not have children, seem to be particular characteristics of the CNAD group and are not significant differences within the GSS sample. Additional characteristics of the CNAD sample are summarized in Appendix Table A5. Greater awareness of and sense of urgency surrounding climate change in the CNAD sample is positively and significantly related to the overall consist ency of conscious consumption, similar to findings reported in Maibach, Roser Renouf, and Leiserowitz (2009). A variety of motivations for purchase decisions are also present and significantly related to consistency of conscious consump tion, from concern for health and safety to values such as protecting the environ ment and the well-being of future generations. These motivations are also highly correlated with one another (results not shown). Other authors have similarly found that prosocial and environmental values are strong among conscious con sumers, coexisting with other self-oriented values (health, family, self-reliance, etc. [Gilg, Barr, and Ford 2005; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005; Shaw et al.
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TABLE 1 Descriptive Statistics
CNAD GSS, buy/boy- GSS, not buy/boy (n = 2,164) cotters (n = 351) cotters (n = 1,106)
Age M = 46.40°" M = 44.14 M = 46.6" (SD = 13.78) (SD = 14.79) (SD = 17.1) Female 77.8"°° 60.1 54.0° White 83.0°" 88.6 75.6"° Graduate degree 42.0°" 16.2 7.9°°° Mother has graduate degree 17.1°°° 6.0 4.3 Father has graduate degree 26.5°°° 12.3 6.2°°° Married 69.5°°° 58.1 53.0 No children 44.4°°° 29.3 25.1 Income of $90k or more 33.0°°° 27.0 15.8°°° Donated to social or political 71.4° 73.2 42.8°°° cause
Contacted politician 78.4°°° 68.09 35.4°°° Very important to choose 51.1°°° 26.3 16.9°°° products for political reasons
NOTE: Descriptive statistics are for the CNAD sample, GSS respondents who have buy/boy cotted in the past year, and GSS respondents who have not buy/boycotted in the past year. Significance tested using two-tailed /-test for continuous variables and chi-square test for all other categorical variables. Significance levels indicate comparison to the GSS buy/boycotter group (n = 351). Unless otherwise specified, numbers are percentages. "p < .05. < .001.
2005; Micheletti and Stolle 2005]). The sample also has relatively low levels of trust in institutions (see Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005; Brecard et al. 2009), but respondents tend to believe that conscious consumption can help to protect the environment, support fair wages, and effect social change (see Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005).
Results: GSS
Table 2 presents OLS models predicting activism using the GSS sample. In the first model, which includes only sociodemographic independent variables, 18 percent of the variance in activism is explained. When buy/boycotting in the past year is added, it accounts for an additional 9 percent of the variance, as those who have buycotted or boycotted have also engaged in significantly more political activity. Age, income, and education remain significant predictors of activism in the final model.
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TABLE 2 GSS 04 Module on Citizenship: Regression of the Activism Scale on Predictors for the Full GSS Sample
Model 1: Model 2: Demographics Only With Buy/Boycotting
Dependent variable: Activism Scale Coef. Std. Coef. Coef.
Demographic variables Age .05°" .153"° .05°" .162" 4 (.01) (.01) Female .14 .015 -.01 -.001 (.29) (.27) White .90" .071° .64 .050 (.39) (.37) Household income .63"° 134«.«» .43" .091" (logged) (.16) (.15) Education .47"" .211"°° .39 "' .230"" (.06) (.06) Mothers education .12® .088° .08 .057 (.06) (.05) Father's education .08 .065 .08 .066 (.05) (.05) Number of children -.06 .019 -.05 -.015 (.11) (.10) Married -.78° .080° -.60 -.062 (.33) (.31) Conscious consumption Buy/boycott in past year 3.42°°° (0.31) Constant 1.29 (1.70) 4.14 (1.64) R-squared .188 .279 Adjusted R-squared .180 .271
NOTE: Statistics include unstandardized coefficients (with standard errors in parentheses) and standardized coefficients; n = 928. *p < .05. °°p < .01. *"p < .001.
Results: CNAD Survey
Table 3 displays the results of four regression models using the CNAD sample (combined results for ten imputations). The first model does not contain any conscious consumption independent variable, and the three subsequent
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CO rnCO g CM 3 © U co O co 0 CO CO 00 CO rH 05 CO I—I OS aj __i 0 o TJH O rH CO C/3 ^2 o r c/3 U U CD u O co oq CM 00 00 CO co 00 < £ oq co ^ CO r- co CO o o o o 0 o V 0 o oo U IO o CO in 0 "2 uo 0) 0 J Ph O u u in m 0 0 G 0 13 13 „ go O o o "S 0 C/3 C/3 S 0 0 H Y> ■■s V3 £ 0 U u0 cij-5 2?b G 0 "3 O u bb'C ^ s - ^ ;g c o c "ctf fl o T3 > in > c o #0 0 _ _ 0 £ '3 ■5!§ ^v c 2* 0 0 0 o g 9-1 C3 0 0 c £ £ -g s a 4 £ o c c 0 J £ ,o > o -Q g|| aj •e O "o p .S 0 o 0 fl t; > O H3 £ o O« t-Hc |•- £ 3 0 fl Oh 1 ^H "cs oj S &[5 "S -W rH 0 2 "3 0g *s ■§ « ■4 g o P 0 T3 0 c2 C/5 > *V3 C C S £> *-5 ^ PCh £ M 0 < 0 O o J g o O m Ph C 0 PQ Ph W u U Q ffi 176 This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms bJO G cu ! | B 0 03 o CO o s s G CD CD 3 -2 TJ C/5 U O T3 O 0 0 0 g PS a. -is CD TJ CD O 03 i-H J ^ S 43 t) ,—^ i-H CD CO CD CD 00 C 0 8 0 u -B o o g s> > 0 5 0 Dh o en 177 This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 178 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY models vary only in the format of the conscious consumption scale entered. Model 2 uses the overall consistency of conscious consumption as its conscious consumption measure. Model 3 separates consistency of conscious consump tion by sectors, and model 4 separates conscious consumption items into sub scales by whether the action involved purchasing or reducing participation in the market. Across all models, there are several independent variables that are consistently significant. Women on average have a significantly lower activism score, as do older respondents and those who report a more "secure" income. (On gender differences in conscious consumption see, Neilson [2010], On activism and gen der, see Verba, Schlozman, and Bradt [1995].) The dummy variables for residen tial location (city, suburb, small town, or country/farm) were also significant as a group, with residents of suburbs and small towns scoring significantly higher on activism than urbanites. Self-rated levels of political activism in general and five years ago are significantly related to current levels of activism on sustainability issues. Higher scores on the information and communication scale are signifi cantly associated with higher activism. In model 2, the consistency of respondents' conscious consumption is signifi cantly and positively related to activism, holding constant respondents' past levels of political activism, their level of seeking and sharing information about conscious consumption, and other demographic and contextual variables. The relationship between overall conscious consumption consistency and activism does not differ based on whether the respondent started consciously consum ing before, at the same time, or later than activism (there is no significant interaction between overall conscious consumption consistency and when the respondent started consciously consuming relative to activism; results not shown). When scales for the consistency of conscious consumption for each sector are included in the model, only some are significant. Having a higher consistency score for energy, food, and services is in each case significantly related to higher activism scores, but not so for transportation, water, and goods. In model 4, both practices that are purchase-oriented and practices that reduce one's participation in the market are significantly and positively related to activism. The models that include conscious consumption predictors explain about 58 percent of the variance in activism. While conscious consumption predictors add about only 2.2 to 2.6 percentage points to the variance explained in these models, this addition is significant (p < .001). Additional analyses Additional findings that are not presented here are worth noting. For the CNAD models, we also tested separate models for formal or traditional activ ism (e.g., voting, contacting officials, etc.) and for informal engagement (e.g., forwarding emails and information, participating in festivals, etc.), and the This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms DOES CHANGING A LIGHT BULB LEAD TO CHANGING THE WORLD? 179 results for conscious consumption were the same. The overall consistency of conscious consumption is related to not only informal engagement but also traditional activism, in contrast to Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti's (2005) findings that buycotting and boycotting are not significantly related to conven tional participation. In addition, for the GSS and CNAD models, we also tested each individual activism variable as an outcome and found that the relationship between conscious consumption and activism remained the same and significant. Discussion and Conclusion Our findings strongly contradict the hypothesis that conscious consumption displaces activism. On the contrary, having buycotted or boycotted in the past year is related to higher levels of activism in both our samples. Even when hold ing a number of covariates constant for the CNAD sample, people who do more conscious consumption (i.e., have higher levels of consistency) are more engaged in activism in a variety of forms. We find that conscious consumption "crowds in," rather than "crowds out," political activism. The association between conscious consumption practices and activism is not simply a function of respondents' seeking and sharing of information; nor is the relationship between conscious consumption and activism an issue of sustainability reduci ble to prior levels of activism. The relationship between conscious consumption and activism is significant and robust for both samples, and the replication of the results in two different U.S. samples lends considerable credibility to the results. We also find that these relations hold true across a variety of different types of conscious consumption. For example, what some have termed "green con sumerism," that is, the shift from standard consumer choices to greener or more ethical products or services, is as much associated with political activism as "reduced consumerism." Our respondents engage in both kinds of strategies, and one does not appear to be less "political" than the other. Whether green consumption may yield a higher carbon footprint than refraining from consump tion is another issue. We did find that the goods, water, and transportation categories are not significantly related to activism measures.14 This is an intriguing finding about which we can only speculate. One possibility is that these are some of the more structurally challenging sectors in which to consciously consume. For example, the scale, layout, and infrastructure of communities are heavily influenced by the personal automobile. Culturally, the categories for "stuff' and "cars" are perhaps those most closely and visibly linked to the American lifestyle. Consumers may have greater opportunity to control their actions in the other sectors that are less structurally constrained, or "locked-in" (Jackson and This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 180 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY Papathanasopoulou 2008; see also Holt's contribution on bottled water, this volume.) Our findings also cast light on other assumptions associated with the crowding-out view. For example, self-interest, as in the sense of attempts to protect personal health or the quality of products that one consumes, and pub lic interest, such as trying to reduce environmental impact or support workers, do not appear to be mutually exclusive motivations for respondents as Szasz (2007) and Johnston (2008) have argued. As noted above, the polysemy of con sumption undermines arguments that attempt to identify single or dominant meanings. Because we are using cross-sectional data, we are unable to make a strong causal argument that conscious consumption leads to prosustainability activism. In the CNAD sample, becoming politically active before or at about the same time as becoming involved in conscious consumption is the rule. Three-quarters of the sample fit this pattern. However, nearly one out of five respondents became active after they began practicing conscious consumption. There are apparently a number of paths to environmental and social activism, and conscious consumption should not be discounted as one potential gateway As noted by several authors, political consumption may be less significant as an end than as a means. It raises awareness, deepens interest and commitment, and encourages various forms of involvement (Barnett et al. 2005; Seyfang 2009; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005). Our analysis helps us to understand what we see as an integrated lifestyle of conscious consumption and political activism. Individuals in the United States seem to use conscious consumption as one approach—one that specifically tar gets corporations, producers, and market processes—in a broader repertoire of actions that address a multiplicity of institutions. For those who have a less con sistent and holistic approach to conscious consumption—perhaps those who have changed their light bulbs or occasionally buy some organic produce—activism is less prominent, though not necessarily wholly absent. The results do not suggest that activists give little consideration to their consumption or that conscious con sumers avoid activism, as the displacement hypothesis and theories that invoke visions of the apolitical consumer have suggested. By contrast, our results are supportive of the interpretations of Alberto Melucci (1989,1996) for whom iden tity is a key component of social action, and new lifestyle politics in expanded realms are key to understanding contemporary social movements (see also Giddens 1991). We find that conscious consumers and activists tend to be the same individu als. Indeed, this raises a historical point: the consumer marketplace in the post World War II era has been understood as a depoliticized sphere, despite its lively inclusion in labor and political struggles earlier in U.S. history (Glickman 2001; Cohen 2003; Hilton 2007). Like all other sites of social life, it is one with histori cally contingent potentials and limitations. This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms DOES CHANGING A LIGHT BULB LEAD TO CHANGING THE WORLD? Appendix TABLE A1 GSS Variables Included in Activism Scale Variables N Mean (SD) Range Activism Scale (alpha = .803) Contact a politician or a civil servant 1,468 to 2.45 (1.0) 1, 4a express view Sign a petition 1,462 2.91 (0.99) 1, 4a Contact or appear in the media to 1,466 1.80 (0.81) 1, 4a express view Donate money or raise funds for a 1,466 2.61 (1.1) 1, 4a social or political activity Take part in a demonstration 1,464 1.84 (0.85) 1, 4a Attend a political meeting or rally 1,464 2.17 (0.97) 1,4" How often try to persuade friends, rel 1,467 2.27 (0.98) 1, 4b atives, or fellow workers to share view Overall rating of political interest 1,465 2.81 (0.88) 1, 4° Variables measured on the scale 1 = have not done it and would never do it, 2 = have not done it but might do it, 3 = have done it in the more distant past, 4 = have done it in the past year. Variables measured on the scale 1 = never, 2 = rarely, 3 = sometimes, 4 = never. ■Variables measured on the scale 1 = not at all interested, 2 = not very interested, 3 = fairly interested, 4 = very interested. TABLE A2 CNAD Variables Included in Scales (n = 2,164) Variables Mean (SD) Range Activism Scale" (alpha = .772) Contact congress people, representatives, mayors, 2.62 city (0.56) 1, 3b councilpersons, or agencies Participate in government hearings 1.34 (0.58) 1, 3b Write letters to the editor 1.62 (0.71) 1, 3b Become member of organization 1.70 (0.63) 1,3° Donate money to projects or causes 1.90 (0.72) 1, 3C Forward emails and/or news articles to others 2.20 (0.82) 1, 4d Write a personal email or letter to others 1.74 (0.78) 1, 4d Conscious consumption (CC) affects vote 5.23 (1.8) Participate in festivals, celebrations, symbolic actions 3.25 (1.9) 1, T (continued) This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 182 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY TABLE A2 (continued) Variables Mean (SD) Range Overall rating of political activity 3.87 (1.7) 1, 7f Overall Consistency of CC Scale (alpha = .865) Alternative energy 2.93 (2.4) 0,7s Reduce energy 5.35 (1.9) 0, 7s Alternative commute 2.49 (3.0) 0,7s Fewer flights 3.52 (2.9) 0,7s Less driving 5.30 (2.1) 0,7s Conserving H20 4.86 (2.0) 0,7s Grow food 2.15 (2.3) 0,7s Reduce certain foods 4.80 (2.2) 0, 7s Reduce meat 4.57 (2.5) 0, 7s Cruelty free / fair trade foods 4.43 (2.3) 0, 7g Local / organic foods 5.09 (2.0) 0,7s Discontinue disposable water bottles 5.35 (2.3) 0,7s Fair trade / union goods 3.50 (2.2) 0,7s Green goods 4.51 (2.1) 0,7s Local goods 4.03 (2.2) 0,7s Reduce / used goods 4.50 (2.2) 0,7s Do-it-yourself (DIY) goods 3.45 (2.3) 0, 7g Eco friendly services 2.99 (2.2) 0,7s Information and Communication Scale (alpha = .810) Read books or magazines about CC 4.57 (1.9) 1, T Watch/listen to programs about CC 4.28 (1.9) 1, T Learn about CC through email lists 4.32 (2.1) 1, T Learn about CC through internet sources 3.87 (2.1) \,r Attend educational events about CC 2.58 (1.7) 1,7e Talk to friends about CC 2.48 (0.83) l,4d Talk to family about CC 2.59 (0.91) 1, 4d Talk to others you know about CC 2.17 (0.80) 1, 4d Talk to strangers about CC 1.63 (0.71) 1, 4d aAll variables in the activism scale refer to activity in the past two years specifically on CC-related issues. Variables that are measured on the scale 1 = never, 2 = 1-5 times, 3 = 6+ times. 'Variables that are measured on the scale 1 = never, 2 = 1-3 times, 3=4+ times. dVariables that are measured on the scale 1 = never, 2 = monthly/few times a year, 3 = almost weekly, 4 = almost daily. "Variables measured on a scale from 1 = never to 7 = often. Variables measured on a scale from 1 = not at all active to 7 = very active. sVariables measured on a scale from 0 = never or NA, 1 = very inconsistently, to 7 = very consistently. This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms DOES CHANGING A LIGHT BULB LEAD TO CHANGING THE WORLD? TABLE A3 Summary of All Variables and Scale for GSS Analysis (n = 928) Variable Description Dependent variable: Activism Activism GSS activism items originally scored on a scale from 1 = often to 4 = never. Scale Reversed scores were summed, alpha =.803. Range (8, 32), mean (19.40), SD (4.8) Conscious consumption Buy/boycott 1 = buy/boycotted in the past year, 0 = did not buy/boycott in the past year in past year (following Neilson and Paxton [2010]). Mean (0.27). For all respondents who answered this question (n = 1,457), 24 percent had buy/boycotted in the past year, 15 percent had in the more distant past, 34 percent had never but might do it, and 28 percent had never and would never do it. Demographic variables Age Continuous. Range (18, 89), mean (45.2), SD (15.9) Female 0 = male, 1 = female. Mean (0.54) White 0 = not white, 1 = white. Mean (0.83) Household Continuous, dollars of household income, logged to correct for positive income skew. For original variable, range ($468, $151,053), mean ($59,308), SD ($44k). Education Continuous, years of education. Range (0, 20), mean (14.2), SD (2.8) Mothers Continuous, years of education. Range (0, 20), mean (12.0), SD (3.5) education Fathers edu Continuous, years of education. Range (0, 20), mean (11.9), SD (3.9) cation Number of Continuous, number of children. Range (0, 8), mean (1.73), SD (1.5) children Married 0 = not married, 1 = married. Mean (0.59) TABLE A4 Summary of All Variables and Scales for CNAD Analysis (n = 2,164) Variable Description Dependent variable: Activism Activism Scale Sum of standardized survey items, alpha = .772. Range (-12.8, 33.2), mean (6.88), SD (8.7) Conscious consumption (CC) Overall consistency of CC Sum of all CC survey items, alpha = .865. Range (5, 126), scale mean (77.46), SD (20.3) Consistency, by sector Energy Average of 2 energy items (see Table 1), alpha = .52. Range (0, 7), mean (4.34), SD (1.6) (continued) This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 184 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY TABLE A4 (continued) Variable Description Transportation Average of 3 transportation items (see Table 1), alpha = .57. Range (0, 7), mean (3.96), SD (1.8) Water Single water item (see Table 1). Range (0, 7), mean (5.10), SD (1.7) Food Average of 6 food items (see Table 1), alpha = .81. Range (0, 7), mean (4.61), SD (1.3) Goods Average of 5 goods items (see Table 1), alpha = .85. Range (0, 7), mean (4.20), SD (1.5) Services Single service item (see Table 1). Range (0, 7), mean (3.13), SD (2.2) Consistency, by purchase or reduce Purchase Average of 7 purchase items (see Table 1), alpha = .87. Range (0, 7), mean (4.12), SD (1.5) Reduce market activity Average of 11 reduce items (see Table 1), alpha = .84. Range (.18, 7), mean (4.42), SD (1.1) Information and communication Info and communication Sum of the standardized scores, alpha = .810. Range scale (-13.4, 16.8), mean (.54), SD (5.7) Demographic Variables Age Continuous, with outliers top coded. Range (18, 80), mean (46.4), SD (13.8). Female 0 = male, 1 = female. Mean (.78) White 0 = not white, 1 = white. Mean (.83) Household income Set of dummy variables. 3.7% less than $10k; 5.4% $10k to $19,999; 57.8% $20k to $89,999; 33.0% $90k and up Income is secure 0 = no, 1 = yes Education Set of dummies. 21.6% less than BA; 36.5% BA; 42.0% graduate degree Mother's education Set of dummies. 59.0% less than BA; 23.9% BA; 17.1% graduate degree Fathers education Set of dummies. 51.3% less than BA; 22.2% BA; 26.5% graduate degree Number of children Set of dummies. 44.4% no children; 25.5% one or two children under 18; 6.2% three or more children under 18; 23.9% all children over 18 Marital status Set of dummies. 19.5% single; 69.5% married or cohabi tating; 11.0% separated, widowed, or divorced Type of community Set of dummies. 26.9% city; 37.7% suburb; 22.2% small town; 13.2% farm/country Time pressure Set of dummies. 22.3% low; 39.5% medium; 38.2% high (continued) This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms DOES CHANGING A LIGHT BULB LEAD TO CHANGING THE WORLD? 185 TABLE A4 (continued) Variable Description History of Involvement Variables Political involvement Set of dummies. 39.5% low involvement; 37.6% medium; 5 years ago 23.0% high Decade respondent Set of dummies. 16.2% 1960s or earlier; 13.3% 1970s; became politically active 17.8% 1980s; 24.3% 1990s; 23.3% 2000s; 5.0% N/A CC in social circle 0 = few/none, 1 = most people in social circle are con scious consumers. Mean (.42). Start of activism vs. CC Set of dummies. 42.0% started activism before CC; 32.8% started activism and CC at the same time; 19.2% started CC before activism, 6% N/A TABLE A5 Additional CNAD Sample Characteristics Correlation with over Range Mean (SD) all consistency of CC Awareness of climate change 1 (not very aware), 6.35 (1.0) .308"" 7 (very aware) Urgency of climate change 1 (not very urgent), 6.49 (0.96) .250"° 7 (very urgent) Addressing ecological issues 1 (not very important), 6.08 (1.3) .357"' with purchasing decisions 7 (very important) Promoting the well-being 1 (notof very important), 5.85 (1.4) .297°'"' the next generation with 7 (very important) purchasing decisions Promoting personal health 1 (not very important), 6.05 (1.3) 238... and safety with purchasing 7 (very important) decisions Conscious consumption 1 (CC)(strongly disagree), 5.97 (1.3) 329«.» can protect the environment 7 (strongly agree) CC can support fair wages 1 (strongly disagree), 5.42 (1.6) .363°" 7 (strongly agree) CC can make social change 1 (strongly disagree), 5.41 (1.6) .365°°° 7 (strongly agree) Trust national political 1 (almost never), 2.51 (1.2) -.023 institutions 7 (almost always) Trust local political 1 (almost never), 3.46 (1.4) .055° institutions 7 (almost always) NOTE: N = 2,164, except for promoting well-being of next generation (n = 2,142), promoting health (n = 2,116), trust national (n = 1,693), trust local (n = 1,692). This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY Notes 1. Thirteen percent of the sample buycotted four or more times, and 11 percent of the sample boy cotted four or more times in the past year. Of the portion of the sample who are most concerned about climate change (the "alarmed," 18 percent of the total sample), only 14 percent had not buycotted and 21 percent had not boycotted in the past year. Forty percent of the sample hoped to buycott or boycott more frequently in the coming year (Maibach, Roser-Renouf, and Leiserowitz 2009). In the same year, the "Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability" market segment was estimated to be 25 percent of the adult U.S. population (LOHAS 2008), and a Harris Poll (2008) found that about 25 percent of a nationally repre sentative sample buy green household products. Similarly, 24 percent of the 1,457 2004 GSS Citizenship Module respondents have buycotted or boycotted in the past year. 2. We use the terms "engagement," "involvement," "participation," and "activity" synonymously throughout the article. 3. In reality, there are important social contagion effects with voting. See Christakis and Fowler (2009). 4. The existing literature has not considered how consumer identities may contribute to political par ticipation, particularly social justice and environmental activism (e.g., Parisi et al. 2004; Tindall, Davies, and Mauboules 2003). 5. Respondents living outside of the United States were excluded from analyses. 6. See newdream.org. 7. The original names come from a monthly mailing called "Step by Step" (no longer in publication), which asked people to take specific consumer actions, such as changing light bulbs or calling on companies to reduce their environmental impact. Some joined the email list through participation in an online contest to win a hybrid car. Others joined through the "C3 - Carbon Conscious Consumer" campaign, which included social networking contests in the context of personal carbon reduction. Additional campaigns also yielded new participants in the email list, including "Break the Bottled Water Habit," and "Simplify the Holidays." 8. Defined in the survey as "supporting organic, cruelty free, fair trade, union made, or sweat free production; raising awareness about ecological problems associated with consumption or supporting eco logical solutions; or supporting local or small businesses or agriculture." 9. The significance of SES, gender, region (e.g., urban vs. rural), and other demographic variables in predicting conscious consumption as well as social/political engagement is noted by various authors (Neilson and Paxton 2010; Stolle and Hooghe 2004; Forno and Ceccarini 2006; Shah et al. 2007; Andersen and Tobiasen 2004; Verba, Schlozman, and Brady 1995; and others). 10. There were 2,271 surveys that were initiated on the LimeSurvey interface. Non-U.S. residents and surveys with data missing for all the variables of interest were excluded. With listwise deletion, the sample size dropped substantially to only 678 valid cases. 11. The amount of missing data increased for items that appeared later in the survey, indicating that a number of respondents discontinued the survey before completing all questions. Additionally, the number of questions that individuals skipped was significantly related to whether they reported (in one of the first questions in the survey) that they were doing something to make their lifestyle more sustainable. Therefore, it seems likely that the data are missing at random (MAR)—missing in a pattern that is related to variables included in the dataset—rather than completely at random (MCAR). 12. Unlike maximum likelihood techniques, MICE allows for the use of ordered and multinomial logistic regression equations in the estimation of imputed values (Allison 2002), which is important for several of the predictors used in this analysis. Ordered, multinomial, and binary logit regressions were used to impute variables where appropriate. For example, 7-point Likert items were imputed using ordered logit. Furthermore, the multiple iterations of MICE, with a random component included in the estimates, prevents imputed values from being treated as if they were "real" data points and therefore avoids the underestimation of standard errors and overestimation of test statistics (Allison 2002). Thirty-four extra variables related to the respondents' knowledge, consumer behavior, political behavior, and attitudes that were not included in any of the models were included in the imputation process. Following Allison (2002) and von Hippel (2007), variables that were used to construct the dependent variable scale were included in the imputation process, and cases with missing dependent variable data were not deleted from the This content downloaded from 129.174.21.5 on Fri, 31 Mar 2017 17:17:04 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms DOES CHANGING A LIGHT BULB LEAD TO CHANGING THE WORLD? 187 analysis. 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