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Beginning from the 1990s, the concept of sustainable development has been purposefully implemented by the most advanced economic actors including separate regions, countries, companies, and individuals. Consumer behaviour is also changing: the most advanced consumers who care about their own health and are aware of the environmental issues, change their behaviour to the conscious consumption patterns. However, most do so under the influence of companies promoting sustainable value propositions, or under the influence of government policy that encourages sustainable behaviour. Within the chapter ‘Dimensions of conscious consumption’, the authors consider consumption patterns evolution from traditional (patriarchal) consumption pattern through hedonic consumption to sustainable and conscious consumption patterns. The authors analyse transformation mechanisms of consumption patterns and how they affect changing consumer behaviour from traditional to conscious behaviour. As a result, a typology of sustainable value propositions for conscious consumers was formed, with the comparative analysis of four sustainable value proposition models: Driven by humanistic philosophy, Unique market position, Driven by government policy, and Leadership in sustainable innovations. Cases of Bouchee (Russian coffee shop and bakery chain) and Enjoy the Run (sport club for recreational running lovers) were analysed as the examples of companies implementing the considered models.

The analysis of cultural consumption centers on the influence of individual characteristics (mainly social class). However, this chapter proposes that this relationship is contextual. More specifically, this relationship varies according to the nature of local cultural scenes where people live. In order to show the contextual impact of cultural scenes, we analyze a representative survey among a Spanish population. Three main conclusions are drawn. First, two main dimensions explain the patterns of cultural consumption by the Spanish population: the classical distinction between popular and high culture, and the distinction between conventional and unconventional cultural practices. Second, other characteristics, beside social class, are important to explain the implication of population in different patterns of cultural consumption, for instance, age; young people are oriented toward more unconventional practices regardless of their social class. Third, local cultural scenes matter: the difference between cultural practices of different groups (for instance, young and old people) is reduced in municipalities oriented toward unconventionality, showing an “assimilation contextual effect.” This contextual effect also has some impact upon local cultural policies that we mention briefly.

The analysis of lifestyles and cultural consumption has focused mainly on determining the impact of individual attributes on the types of practices developed by individuals. However, the effect of the access or exposure to certain opportunities of cultural consumption is less frequently analyzed, or even whether this exposure has different effects according to different social groups. The analysis of this issue is one of the objectives of the “Cultural Scene” research program, which is being developed under the project “Cultural Dynamics of Cities.” In this chapter, we try to determine whether existing cultural scenes in different municipalities influence how Spanish residents develop their cultural practices, with data from a nationally representative survey.

This paper presents a behavioral economics model with bounded rationality to describe an individual's food consumption choices that lead to weight gain and dieting. Using a physiological relationship determining calories needed to maintain weight, we simulate the food consumption choices of a representative female over a 30-year period. Results show an individual will periodically choose to diet, but that diet will reduce weight only temporarily. Recurrence of weight gain leads to cyclical dieting, which reduces the trend rate of weight increase. Dieting frequency is shown to depend on decision period length, dieting costs, and habit persistence.

Purpose – Religion is an important driving force behind many lifestyle decisions. Therefore, it is surprising that research on cultural consumption and stratification has linked religion and religiosity with consumption patterns only to a limited degree. In this chapter, we outline several theoretical directions that can be used for studying the link between religion, religiosity, and cultural consumption and the consequences of this link for cultural stratification.

Design/Methodology/Approach – Our empirical analysis is based on data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), conducted in 2007 and pertaining to samples from 33 countries.

Findings – We present cross-national evidence illustrating that, first, there is a positive correlation between religiosity and cultural consumption in many countries and, second, there is little evidence that religion is significantly linked to cultural consumption. Furthermore, we find that the effect of religiosity on cultural consumption is comparable to that of important socioeconomic factors such as education and socioeconomic status. We offer three possible explanations to the findings. First, that religious individuals tend to be active individuals; therefore, they go more often to religious services and they are active also in cultural participation. Second, a certain level of religiosity affects cultural consumption by setting standards for the intensity of social ties. Third, religiosity plays a central role in marking boundaries of cultural distinction. In the last part of the chapter, we delineate motivations for further research interest in the link between religion and cultural consumption and discuss possible avenues for the development of such research.

We examine the joint demand for components of a household’s diet diversity and its relationship with household and regional characteristics that embody diverse food access and utilization constraints within the framework of the dietary patterns of rice producers in Peru.

We use multivariate probit regression to account for the simultaneous nature of the choice of different dietary group components.

There are diverse food intake patterns for households, depending on their wealth, education, demographic structure, market access and geographic location, as well as past shocks. There are also several obesogenic foods that are complements to consumption, with milk being a strong substitute for some of them. Of particular concern is the high vulnerability of female-headed households to low consumption of micronutrient-rich foods as well as the high vulnerability of households with children to high consumption of beverages with added sugars. Climate shocks are also highly associated with poor diet quality.

Results show the important influence of trade on household nutrition and food security. They indicate that policy and program recommendations should focus on nutrition information (such as labeling requirements) and education so that consumers can make informed decisions. They also suggest that policy makers should focus on how to make healthy foods available during crises to prevent health issues after economic and climatic shocks.

Grotesque wasting has been, and is, generated in a series of spatial levels or scales and in association with accelerated growth rates. A key political challenge for environmental sustainability in the approaching post–consumerist phase of globalisation is to innovate, plan and implement a fresh waste future as part of the wider evolving green revolution. This challenge of addressing the structures and practices of wasting can only be pursued through a multiplex response in production, governance, consumption patterns, scientific advances, national mindset and personal attitudes.

Purpose – This paper utilizes the perspective of abundance, rather than scarcity, to understand economies of cities. It also proposes that the earliest urban centers were attractive places of settlement because they represented a greater variety of jobs and objects compared to the rural countryside.

Design/methodology/approach – The evolutionary trajectory of our species indicates that humans sought out abundance in their natural environments as early as a million years ago. People also deliberately replicated conditions of abundance through the manufacture and discard of large quantities of repetitive objects, and through the “waste” of usable goods. The development of urban centers 6,000 years ago provided new opportunities for both production and consumption and an abundance of diverse goods and services. These processes are analogous to contemporary economists’ views of abundance as a desirable principle and Chris Anderson's view of the Long Tail as the explanatory mechanism for the production and consumption of goods when greater distribution becomes possible.

Social implications – Today, cities are growing very rapidly despite objectively deleterious conditions such as crowding, pollution, competition, and disease transmission. By recognizing the “pull” factors of consumption and opportunity, researchers can expend their energies to mitigate the negative effects of cities’ inevitable growth.

Originality/value – Prior archaeological and contemporary analyses of cities have focused on the role of the upper echelons of the political and economic hierarchy; in contrast, this “bottom-up” approach addresses the attractions of cities from the perspective of ordinary inhabitants.

To examine bad credit experiences in the context of identity to understand the entanglement between bad credit and the deformation of identity.

A qualitative method using depth interviews and hermeneutical analysis.

Bad credit is a major life event and plays a critical role in identity. By restricting or eliminating identity construction and maintenance through consumption, identities are deformed. Consumer identities are deformed as they are consumed by the identity deformation process as normal patterns of consumption that have built and supported their identities are disrupted and demolished. Bad credit is overwhelmingly consumptive of consumers – it consumes their time, energy, patience, lifestyle, relationships, social connections, and perhaps most importantly, it consumes their identity as it deforms who they are.

Researchers need to examine more closely not just the creation and maintenance of identity, but also how identity is deformed and deconstructed through consumption experiences that can no longer be enjoyed.

Government agencies may want to reexamine policies toward the granting of credit to reduce the incidence of loading up consumers with credit they are not able to pay for. The deformation of identity may result in anti-social behavior, although our study does not address this directly.

This study is different from previous work in several ways. We focus on identity deformation due to bad credit. By analyzing a crisis response that transcends the specific impetus of bad credit, we extend identity theory by developing an insight into “identities-in-crisis.” We also provide a theoretical framework and explore how consumers’ identities are deformed and renegotiated.