Brand-Correa, LI, Mattioli, G, Lamb, WF et al. (1 more author) (2020) Understanding (and tackling) need satisfier escalation. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, 16 (1). pp. 309-325. ISSN 1548-7733
Abstract
Contemporary consumption patterns, embedded in profit-maximizing economic systems, are driving a worsening socio-ecological crisis, in particular through the escalating production and consumption of goods with high material and/or energy intensity. Establishing minimum and maximum standards of consumption (or “consumption corridors”) has been suggested as a way to address this crisis. Consumption corridors provide the normative basis for sustainable consumption, that is, enough consumption for individuals to satisfy needs, but not too much to collectively surpass environmental limits. Current consumption patterns (especially in the global North) do not yet fall within consumption corridors, and standards are not fixed over time. Consumption is socially constructed and can escalate due to socio-economic, technological, or infrastructural influences. In this article, we propose a framework to understand such escalating trends. This approach can be used as a tool for comprehending how consumption evolves over time, as well as for identifying the most effective leverage points to intervene and prevent escalation from happening in the first place. We build on theories of human-need satisfaction and combine these conceptual understandings with insights from research on socio-technical provisioning systems, sociological approaches to consumption, and perspectives on infrastructure lock-in. We illustrate our framework by systemically considering escalation for a specific technological product – the private car.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group on behalf of the University of Geneva. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | Wellbeing, satisfiers, systems thinking, consumption corridors, human needs |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Environment (Leeds) > School of Earth and Environment (Leeds) > Sustainability Research Institute (SRI) (Leeds) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number Leverhulme Trust RL-2016-048 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 19 Nov 2020 15:52 |
Last Modified: | 19 Nov 2020 15:52 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor & Francis Group |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/15487733.2020.1816026 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:168082 |
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