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"Politics at the
Checkout Line: Explaining Political Consumerism in the United
States." Political Research Quarterly 64.4 (2011): 803-17. ProQuest.
Web. 15 Oct. 2015.
Political Research Quarterly
64(4) 803817
2011 University of Utah
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DOI: 10.1177/1065912910379232
http://prq.sagepub.com
Abstract
Political consumerism is the intentional buying or abstention from buying specific products for political, social, or ethical
purposes. We develop and test hypotheses regarding the individual sources of political consumerism in the United
States. Analysis of survey data shows that similar to voting, education, political interest, and citizen duty promote
political consumerism. Akin to protest behavior, political consumerism is enhanced by political distrust and general
discontent. In contrast to turnout, political consumerism significantly decreases with age. Given the extraelectoral and
self-initiated nature of political consumerism, citizen initiative and a proclivity for individualized forms of activism are
significant sources of political consumerism.
Keywords
political consumerism, political participation, activism, lifestyle politics
Fair Trade. Sweatshop Free. Buy Local. Not
Tested on Animals. Environmentally Friendly. Buy
American. These are just some of the slogans and product labels that prompt American citizens to be political
during the course of everyday consumer activity. The
intentional buying or abstention from buying specific
products for political, social, or ethical purposes constitutes the core of what has been labeled political consumerism. The notion and practice of using consumer
purchasing power as a political device is not a new development and has several significant precedents in American history: the boycotting of British goods through the
formation of nonimportation and nonconsumption pacts
during the American Revolution (B. C. Smith 1994); the
National Consumer Leagues white label campaign from
1898 to 1918 that encouraged consumers to purchase
nonsweatshop goods (Sklar 1998); the well known Montgomery bus boycott of 1955 (McAdam 1982); the boycott launched against Nestle in 1977 in protest of their
marketing of infant formula to developing countries
(Keck and Sikkink 1998; M. Friedman 2004); and the
boycotting of Nike running shoes during the Nike sweatshop labor campaign that culminated in the mid-1990s
(Bennett 2004). More recently, gay rights activists boycotted various California businesses that contributed
money in support of the anti-gay-marriage state ballot
measure, Proposition 8 (Ostrom 2008); and a boycott was
called against Whole Foods Market by universal health
care advocates due to the company CEOs public opposition to a single-payer health care system in the United
States. (E. Friedman 2009).
In addition to its historical record and persistence over
time, there is evidence that politicized consumer behavior, such as boycotting, has been on the rise in the United
States and other Western industrial democracies beginning in the mid- to late 1970s (M. Friedman 1985; Norris
2002; Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005; Dalton 2008).
In terms of political consequentiality, the efficacy of
political consumerism as a form of political action has
been observed in the form of policy changes by targeted
firms and the precipitation of desired forms of government intervention and regulation of targeted industries
(Emmelhainz and Adams 1999; M. Friedman 1999, 2004;
Micheletti 2003; N. C. Smith 2001) as well as the registering of economic impacts in the form of declines in the
stock prices of targeted firms (Pruitt and Friedman 1986;
Pruitt, Wei, and White 1988; Rock 2003). Despite its historical recurrence, increased prevalence, and observed
efficacy, political consumerism has received little direct
1
Corresponding Author:
Brandon L. Bartels, George Washington University, 2115 G Street,
NW, 440 Monroe Hall, Washington, DC 20052, USA
Email: bartels@gwu.edu
804
805
806
dimensions, protesting will be used to represent a noninstitutionalized, group-based, and higher initiative form of
political behavior. Though not uncommon, protesting is
not a mass socialized, quadrennially exercised, or institutionally structured form of political participation within
America.
Existing scholarship has focused primarily on institutionalized modes of participation, which revolve around
electoral and civic participation, and noninstitutionalized
participation, which centers primarily on contentious forms
of protest behavior. Emerging from the literatures on electoral participation and protest are distinct sets of prominent individual-level predictors of known importance for
engagement in each mode of participation. Prying open a
middle ground between these two bodies of literature
is a growing body of research positing the emergence of
new modes of citizenship and engagement (Rimmerman
2001; Norris 2002; Dalton 2008). Within this developing
literature, one extant theoretical perspective for linking
the key individual-level factors identified within the bodies of research on electoral and protest participation to
hypotheses regarding their expected impact on political
consumerism is the nascent body of literature on what has
been termed lifestyle politics (Bennett 1998). The term
lifestyle politics is used to describe the practice of
politicizing the personal, whereby citizens identify the
political implications of everyday personal recreational,
fashion, and consumption choices and attempt to alter
them in expression of political preferences and to affect
political change (Bennett 1998; Sapiro 2000; Stolle,
Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005; Shah et al. 2007). The practice of lifestyle politics reflects the movement away from
institutionalized modes of political participation toward
modes of political expression and engagement that are
more individually based, informal, and available for dayto-day implementation. Political consumerism is posited
as a form of political participation that embodies the practice of lifestyle politics.
The theory of lifestyle politics provides a framework
for linking the broad societal changes brought about by
globalization and postindustrialization to observed changes
in patterns of citizenship and participation in the United
States. The lifestyle politics perspective is founded upon
the theories of risk society (Giddens 1991), subpolitics
(Beck 1997), and postmaterialism (Inglehart 1971), which
together chart the following historical backdrop for the
rise of lifestyle politics: (1) globalization and postindustrialization led to a displacement of the structure and
practice of political life under industrial society (Giddens
1991; Beck 1997); (2) postmodernization also resulted in
large-scale shifts away from materialist concerns toward
postmaterialist concerns and values (Inglehart 1971, 1997);
(3) accompanying these changes was reduced confidence
and trust in the capacity of governments to address emerging societal problems, large-scale safety risks, and the
shifting concerns of many citizens (Giddens 1991; Beck
1997; Inglehart 1971); and (4) despite declining levels of
political trust, increases in education among younger
cohorts of Americans, as well as the growth of postmaterialist concerns, helped to stabilize and even slightly
expand interest in politics and public affairs (Bennett
1998). The rise in the practice of lifestyle politics beginning in the late twentieth century is viewed as a direct
result of these combined forces (Bennett 1998; Stolle,
Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005) and can be characterized by
the composite thesis that younger generations of politically
interested yet distrusting Americans will move away from
the strict practice of conventional politics and seek out new
arenas for and ways of practicing politics by other means
(Ginsberg and Shefter 1990; Bennett 1998; Sapiro 2000).
Hypotheses
The work on lifestyle politics provides a theoretical guide for
generating hypotheses regarding the effects of individuallevel variables of known importance to electoral and protest participation on the probability of engaging in political
consumerism. Through this process, we can begin to produce a clearer sense of what kind of participation political
consumerism is and how it should be situated related to
behaviors like voting and protesting.
Institutionalized forms of political participation in the
United States are those that link citizens to democratic
government via the electoral process. Using the lifestyle
politics perspective as a theoretical guide, political consumerism should be distinguishable from voting on the
institutional/noninstitutional dimension through the following variables: general discontent, political distrust,
strength of partisanship, and age. The theory of lifestyle
politics posits discontent and political distrust as central
causal forces: recognition of some perceived problem or
objectionable state of affairs, along with lack of faith in
government and the efficacy of conventional routes of
influence, culminate to create the impetus to locate alternative routes of political expression and engagement. This
in turn, leads individuals to politicize personal behaviors
(Sapiro 2000; Micheletti, Follesdal, and Stolle 2004). In
line with this perspective, we argue that general discontent regarding the status quo in ones life should be an
important motivational source of political consumerism
(Hypothesis 1). Scholarship on political protest undoubtedly reveals the privileged position of discontent among
classical collective behavior and social movement theories as a primary cause of political protest (McAdam
1982; Klandermans 2003). Theories of structural strain,
frustration/aggression, and relative deprivation posit an
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808
well as other more individualized political acts, like signing a petition or wearing a political T-shirt (Micheletti,
Follesdal, and Stolle 2004). We contend that the emphasis placed on individualized activism should serve to distinguish political consumerism from traditional forms
of noninstitutionalized participation, such as protest.
We believe that a protest is fundamentally a group-based
event where the costs of individual participation are dampened by the mobilizing group and solidarity incentives (Rosenstone and Hansen 1993), as well as social
identity and organizational commitment goals (Klandermans
2003), play an important motivational role. In short,
engagement in individualized forms of political activism
should serve as an important source of political consumerism (Hypothesis 9), but fail to exert significant effects
on protest.
In sum, the theory of lifestyle politics provides a novel
framework for understanding the unique individual-level
causal dynamics of political consumer behavior. The theory emphasizes the volatile coexistence of institutional
and noninstitutional variables within the individual citizen
and its causal link to the adoption of new forms of political participation. Education, interest, and duty, which
traditionally pull citizens toward electoral participation,
combined with general discontent, political distrust, and
youth, which traditionally push them away from it, create
the hydraulic pressure required to propel citizens into extraelectoral forms of participation. Civic initiative and a preference for individualized forms of political activism serve
as the final pieces of the puzzle, channeling the aforementioned pressure into the practice of lifestyle politics and
engagement in political consumerism.
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810
Political Consumerism
Voter Turnout
Variable Coefficient
SE p
Coefficient
Protest
SE p
Coefficient
SE p
Education (+)
1.024 0.385** .008 2.503 0.379*** .000 0.530 0.718 .461
1.714 0.395***
.000 0.297 0.352 .399 1.500 0.682* .028
Political interest (+)
Citizen duty (+)
1.575
0.613*
.010
1.454
0.581*
.012
-0.888 0.924 .336
0.107
0.280
.703
1.370
0.274*** .000
0.486
0.549
.376
Partisan strength (no effect)
Political distrust (+)
0.888 0.431* .039 0.493 0.421 .242 1.810 0.861* .036
.066
General discontent (+)
1.248 0.471** .008 0.707 0.451 .117 1.345 0.732
Age (+)
1.140 1.466 .437 2.023 0.433*** .000 -4.128 1.019*** .000
Age squared (-)
-4.141
1.783*
.020
Civic initiative (+)
1.194 0.248***
.000 0.130 0.288 .652 0.868 0.412* .035
Individualized activism (+)
2.571
0.695*** .000
-1.028 0.811 .205 1.522 1.195 .203
Control variable
.073 0.041 1.141 .971
Group membership
2.048 0.686** .003 1.612 0.900
Church attendance
-0.338 0.363 .352 0.742 0.374* .047 0.307 0.670 .647
External political efficacy
-0.308 0.387 .427 0.271 0.398 .496 0.823 0.798 .303
Internal political efficacy
-0.260 0.368 .480 0.428 0.357 .230 -0.029 0.597 .962
Trade union
0.480 0.387 .214 0.043 0.494 .930 0.463 0.707 .513
Income
0.064 0.413 .877 0.433 0.415 .296 -0.050 0.635 .937
White
0.741 0.229** .001 0.563 0.212** .008 -0.508 0.357 .155
Gender
-0.066 0.193 .733 0.081 0.192 .673 0.232 0.335 .488
.080
Ideology
-1.152 0.419** .006 0.265 0.441 .549 -1.395 0.796
South
-0.042 0.194 .830 0.116 0.197 .556 -0.318 0.396 .422
Constant
-4.694 0.706*** .000 -5.032 0.704*** .000 -3.735 1.083** .001
N
831 827 829
0.228 0.209 Pseudo R2
Proportion correctly predicted
0.773
0.771
Proportional reduction in error
0.232
0.160
Signs next to variable names indicate hypothesized effects for the Political Consumerism model.
p < .10. *p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
to work together to fix or improve something in their community. This variable ranges from 1 for respondents who
have made such attempts more than once, .5 for those
who have attempted only once, and 0 for those who have
not made any such attempt.9 Research on the personalization of politics and political consumerism has identified
participation in checkbook type political organizations as
an important marker of individualized activism, due to
its informal, sporadic, socially passive, and individualized
nature (Stolle, Hooghe, and Micheletti 2005). Our measure of individualized activism was obtained by combining whether or not respondents donated money across a
range of organizations in a single summative scale.10
Last, we included income, race, gender, region, membership in a trade union, internal and external political
efficacy, ideology, church attendance, and organizational
membership as control variables.11 For ease of interpretation, all of our independent variables were coded to range
from 0 to 1. We estimate our models for political consumerism and voter turnout via logistic regression. Given the disproportion of respondents reporting having participated in
Results
The results for the logistic regression of political consumerism, voter turnout, and protest are displayed in Table 1.
For the predictors in which a hypothesis was made, the
expected sign of the effect of the variable on engagement
in political consumerism is listed next to the variable.
Table 1 reveals that each of the hypotheses is supported by
the results. Increases in education, interest in politics, and
citizen duty each increase the probability of engaging in
political consumerism. Strong identification with one of
the two parties in the electorate, however, exerted no significant effect. Increases in political distrust and general
discontent significantly increase the likelihood of political
consumerism. Respondents demonstrating civic initiative in their neighborhood were more likely than those
lacking such initiative to engage in political consumerism.
811
812
Predicted Probability
Education
Low
.208
High
.383
.175
Political interest
Low
.125
High
.436
.311
Citizen duty
Low
.193
.372
.179
High
Political distrust
.224
Low
.332
.108
High
General discontent
.220
Low
High
.403
.183
Civic initiative
Low
.241
High
.512
.271
Individualized activism
Low
.244
High
.497
.253
Age (in years)
18
.311
28
.328
.311
38
48
.262
58
.192
.119
68
Entries are predicted probabilities at specified levels of the key
predictor variable, holding all other variables at their means. Low =
the predictor is set at its 5th percentile value. High = the value of the
predictor at the 95th percentile.
813
Conclusion
The purpose of this study was to explore a significant yet
previously understudied mass political behavior and to
take a solid step toward developing and testing a theory of
its individual-level sources. In this article, we defend the
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Financial Disclosure/Funding
The authors received no financial support for the research and/or
authorship of this article.
Notes
1. Recent work by Dalton (2008) demonstrates the existence
of two theoretically and statistically distinct dimensions
of citizens orientation toward public lifewhat he labels
citizen duty and engaged citizenship. We acknowledge
815
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