Running Head: FACTORS AFFECTING SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION 1
FACTORS AFFECTING SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION 2
FACTORS AFFECTING SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION
Amelia Huang
October 13, 2014
Factors Affecting Sustainable Consumption
In Catherine Banbury, Robert Stinerock and Saroja Subrahmanyan's article "Sustainable Consumption: Introspecting Across Multiple Lived Cultures" (2012), the authors reveal that one of the greatest challenges facing the world today is lack of sustainable development, primarily as a result of consumptions choices made by humans. They suggest that the most important role in achieving sustainable development rests on individual consumers, and it is the basis for reduction of energy consumption and achievement of waste management practices. Sustainable consumption can be achieved by adopting lifestyles that have environmental consequences, but this is not always achievable at the individual level. This is because there are factors that prevent individual sustainable consumption as they affect personal consumption decisions. These are the factors that are the focus if this discussion.
According to Dennis Soron's article "Sustainability, Self-Identity and the Sociology of Consumption" (2010), it has been hard for wealth nations, such as North America to curb the consumptions behaviors of their people that have rendered it hard to curb environmental destruction. It is quoted in the article that "the prospects for corralling consumption everywhere before it strips and degrades our planet beyond recognition would appear to be bleak" (p. 173). The most important factor behind this problem is consumerism, resulting from the lifestyle of the privileged consumers who are able to purchase whatever they desire. These privileged persons have become accustomed to lifestyles that are hard to put behind.
Soron (2010) suggests that individual identity in the west has become increasingly connected to consumption. Consumption has become a way in which the individuals are defining themselves. To be able to fulfill their spiritual, psychological, and social...