Can Sustainable Consumption Be Learned?
This paper shows how sustainable consumption patterns can spread within a population via processes of social learning even though a strong individual learning bias may favor environmentally harmful products. We present a model depicting how the biased transmission of different behaviors via individual and social learning influences agents’ consumption behavior. The underlying learning biases can be traced back to evolved cognitive dispositions. Challenging the vision of a permanent transition toward sustainability, we argue that “green” consumption patterns are not self-reinforcing and cannot be “locked in” permanently. [Excerpted from report]
Evidence from psychology, evolutionary anthropology, and cognitive science suggests that the evolved human psychology shapes what we appreciate, learn, and propagate. Our cognitive dispositions influence the kinds of cultural variants, for example, different consumption behaviors, that spread and persist within a population.
These findings help substantiate assumptions on the evolution of consumption behavior and thus contribute to a theory of consumption. This paper has shown how environmentally benign consumption patterns can disseminate among agents via processes of cultural learning even if strong hedonistic biases favor environmentally harmful ways of consumption. A stylized model of cultural transmission has been proposed that indicates conditions under which a “green” consumption regime can be maintained in the course of an evolutionary process.
A key conclusion is that in spite of inertial tendencies due to a conformist bias, consumer learning does not “lock-in” consumer behavior such that once agents begin to adopt more sustainable patterns of consumption, they necessarily remain on this “path”. Hedonistically attractive new variants may be able to crowd out the established “green” behavior.
This result runs counter to the widespread notion of a “transition” toward sustainability. We consider it an important caveat against a too one-sided and optimistic outlook on the future. In particular, it entails the necessity to safeguard improvements in the sustainability of economic activities, which calls for ongoing and sometimes even increased policy attention, rather than taking for granted what has once been achieved.
[Abstract excepted from report]