More Than One Way to Float Your Boat: Product Use and Sustainability Impacts

Abstract

Concern for sustainability crosses multiple areas of scholarly inquiry. At the macro level, sustainability research has focused primarily on institutional actors and systemic change efforts. At the consumer level, sustainability research has focused primarily on consumer product choice and post-use disposal. Employing a practice theory lens, this study examines how consumer practices during product use results in a wide variance in overall environmental sustainability impacts. Emerging practice configurations illustrate the ways rules as meaning, at both the macro level institutional regulations and micro level of cultural expectations shape consumer options. Practice configurations also illuminate the ways material marketplace resources, both stagnated products and innovations, provide opportunity for variance. Finally, the competence element of practice varies between a traditional consumer culture ethos and new practices vis-a-vis consumer resourcefulness. This study provides a contribution to the link between macromarketing and consumer culture theory in the centrality of enforcement of both governmental level regulations and consumer best practices for improved environmental sustainability.