A Case Study on Lifestyles in the Southeast Asian Region from a Sustainable Consumption Point of View

Abstract

Developing countries continue to struggle to achieve sustainable lifestyles, poverty alleviation, and economic development. Increasing the quantity and quality of consumption generally also means increasing emissions of greenhouse gases and other environmental impacts. The world has recognized the need to decouple economic development (i.e., elevation of the standard of living in developing countries) and resource consumption, but the way to do so remains unclear. The relationship between economic growth and environmental impacts is often discussed in the context of the Kuznets curve, which expresses the development path as an inverted U. One of the ways to decouple that has been discussed in this context is “leap-frogging,” in which developing countries skip (or “compress”) the period of higher environmental impacts in their developmental paths. Structural changes in a country’s industrial sectors are important in this context, including investment in infrastructure, investment in technological innovation, and investment in human resource development (education). The aim of this study was to explore ways to skip the so-called “dirty stages” of development and examine issues related to the “compressed development” concept in the Southeast Asian region, with a particular emphasis on the role of education. To this end, a case study was conducted in Thailand, a relatively newly developed country, in August 2016. A total of 15 individuals were interviewed in Bangkok and Chiang Mai about their current standards of living, social networks, views on education, and future aspirations. The interviewees were from urban and rural areas from five social and economic classes (SECs). Across regional and income categories, (1) people expressed the importance of education in pursuing better lives in the future; (2) people (especially those in the lower SECs) owned more household equipment than we expected, including smart phones, which allowed them access to social networking services and online news; and (3) family was reported as an important safety net, especially for people in lower SECs. In addition, current Thai social, political, and economic conditions influenced people’s perceptions of their “hopes for the future.”.