A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen. By Cliff Zukin, Scott Keeter, Molly Andolina, Krista Jenkins, and Michael X. Delli Carpini. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. 253p. $19.00. Should we be really worried about declining public engagement? Or should we accept that it is merely changing shape? This book describes substantial alterations in the ways Americans are involved in public life, particularly younger citizens, and analyzes a wide range of empirical data with the goal of understanding the implications—both negative and positive—of these emerging patterns of participation.

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A New Engagement? Political Participation, Civic Life, and the Changing American Citizen

An ongoing debate concerns the extent to which political consumerism constitutes political behavior. To address this debate, researchers have examined several predictors of political consumerism, but have not focused on its communicative dimensions, especially with respect to digital media. In this study we conceptualize political consumerism as a form of civic engagement, and we theorize that people who use social media are more likely to engage in political consumerism than those who do not. Using original survey data collected in the US, we find that political consumerism is more closely related to civic engagement than it is to political participation, and that use of social media mediates the relationship between general Internet use and political consumerism.

https://homepage.univie.ac.at/homero.gil.de.zuniga/documents/Gil%20de%20Zuniga,%20Copeland%20&%20Bimber%20(2014)%20New%20Media%20&%20Society.pdf

Political consumerism: Civic engagement and the social media connection

https://research-api.cbs.dk/ws/files/58362825/torben_hansen_et_al_how_the_interplay_acceptedmanuscript.pdf

How the interplay between consumer motivations and values influences organic food identity and behavior

Recent research has pointed to the rise of socially conscious consumption and of lifestyle movements or social movements that focus on changing one's everyday lifestyle choices as a form of protest. Much of this research addresses how adults maintain socially conscious consumption practices. Using interviews with youths who are vegan—strict vegetarians who exclude all animal products from their diet and lifestyle—I isolate the factors influencing recruitment into and retention of veganism as a lifestyle movement. I show that initial recruitment requires learning, reflection, and identity work, and that subsequent retention requires two factors: social support from friends and family, and cultural tools that provide the skills and motivation to maintain lifestyle activism. I also show how participation in the punk subculture further facilitated these processes. This work contributes to studies of youth subcultures and social movements by showing how the two intersect in lifestyle movement activism.

I Was a Teenage Vegan: Motivation and Maintenance of Lifestyle Movements†

Consumption values and self-identity are the essential antecedents of consumer sustainable behavior. By integrating the theory of consumption values and self-identity approach, this research explores the relationship among consumption values (functional, social, conditional, epistemic and emotional), environmental self-identity and the behavioral intention to consume organic food. The data was collected from 406 organic food consumers through a structured questionnaire in Lahore (Pakistan). Using the PLS-SEM approach, we find that conditional value, emotional value, epistemic value, and functional value quality have a significant positive influence on consumers’ behavioral intention to consume organic food. We further find that environmental self-identity significantly mediates the structural relationship between consumption values and the behavioral intention to consume organic food. Our results imply that the interventions targeting environmental self-identity are a promising way to promote sustainable consumption behavior. Our findings also have important implications for the development of the organic food market based on consumption values and self-identities.

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16/7/1106/pdf

The Defining Role of Environmental Self-Identity among Consumption Values and Behavioral Intention to Consume Organic Food.

Drawing on depth interviews with eight socially conscious consumers, this study explores the way socially conscious consumer orientations can help to foster the kinds of prosocial orientations, such as a concern for others, that facilitate civic and political engagement. The data suggest that these consumers reap several private benefits from their socially conscious choices (authenticity, social embeddedness, empowerment, and self-actualization) while also helping to secure broader public virtues, such as a clean environment or workers’ rights. In so doing, they face certain costs (such as inconvenience and limited choice), but these sacrifices are reframed as pleasurable. This perspective challenges conventional, republican views of citizenship that see individuals as selfless and sacrificing for the sake of a common, greater good. Instead, these socially conscious consumers embody an alternative kind of citizenship in which the acquisition of private, self-serving benefits is inextricably linked to the...

Lucinda Jane Atkinson

Papers

Buying In to Social Change: How Private Consumption Choices Engender Concern for the Collective