“The greatest challenge of the twenty-first century is to raise people everywhere to a decent standard of living while preserving as much of the rest of life as possible.” – Edward O. Wilson
The term “consumption” simply represents purchases of goods and services (including energy) by consumers. It has a strong material dimension that lies along a gradient between “needs” and “wants”. In the words of German-born British economist E.F. Schumacher: “Modern economics considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity, taking the factors of production ~ land, labour, and capital ~ as the means. Buddhist economics tries to maximize human satisfactions by the optimal pattern of consumption, while modern economics tries to maximise consumption by the optimal pattern of productive effort.” In his book, “The Theory of the Leisure Class”, Thorstein Veblen, an American economist and sociologist, in 1899 first coined a term “Conspicuous Consumption” to refer to the practice of acquiring and displaying luxury goods and services to publicly demonstrate one’s wealth, status, and power.
Veblen claimed the goods consumed by such consumers were wasteful and did not hold any practical useful value for the consumers except to enhance their reputation and social prestige as well as to provoke the envy of other people. Veblen also called conspicuous consumption of the goods as a conspicuous waste. However, following the original insights of Veblen, some heterodox economists such as James Duesenberry and Robert H. Frank, have argued that awareness of conspicuous consumption habits of others tends to inspire emulation of these practices. James Duesenberry (1949) gave the name “bandwagon effect” or “demonstration effect” to the phenomenon.
There remains a core driver of consumption, popularly known as luxury consumption that extends beyond the public display, to encompass goods and services that elevate material comfort, satisfy notions of “desirable experiences” and/or symbolise exclusivity, cultural status and refined quality, even when not explicitly visible. In fine, conspicuous consumption is driven by the desire to flaunt wealth and status, while luxury consumption focuses on intrinsic value and quality of the products, even though they can also be expensive.
The concept of “hedonic treadmill” (also known as the “hedonic adaptation”) explains the psychological aspect of both conspicuous and luxury consumptions. The initial joy of acquiring luxury goods diminishes quickly, pushing consumers to seek newer or more extravagant possessions to sustain their sense of gratification. The cycle not only fosters perpetual dissatisfaction but also exacerbates feelings of inadequacy and emptiness. The Industrial Revolution significantly facilitated the key impetus behind consumption habits through the mass production of wide varieties of goods, including luxury items, at lower costs through the advancement in production machineries and factory systems, and simultaneously making over goods and services readily available at comparatively low prices to the general population.
This led to a shift towards an overwhelming “consumer culture” where people could purchase more goods like clothing, household items, and tools than ever before. Such ‘democratisation of luxury’ items has been catalysed by rising living standards promoted by industrialisation, quick spreading of urbanisation and the consequent tendency and ability of people to purchase luxury goods that became a way for people to demonstrate their social status. The culture is also associated with the production of useless things, or the possession of things we cannot use.
Those things are not wealth, they can only be defined as ‘illth’, the term coined by John Ruskin in his book Unto This Last (1860). The Industrial Revolution rested on the discovery of new resources – fossil fuels, preeminently – and on new ways of extracting, transforming, processing and consuming them. In the mid-to-late 18th century, Great Britain first witnessed rapid technological and scientific advancement to transform agrarian societies to industrial ones.
Subsequently, rapid expansion of such transformation occurred. However, what we gloss over as the Industrial Revolution was actually four revolutions in one: the revolution in industry (properly so called); the concomitant revolution in agriculture, which now witnessed a great augmentation in its production because of new resources and technologies; the revolution in transport and communication caused by such inventions as the steam engine and the telegraph; and the demographic revolution, whereby advances in sanitation and health greatly reduced human mortality and led to the steady increase in population.
Of course, scrupulous historians would probably add the fifth and sixth revolutions, both are in the political realm, the former being the advancement of democratic and socialist ideas within Europe, the latter being Europe’s political conquest of the rest of the world. In any case, a summary of all these changes can be expressed in one sentence: “More people, producing more, travelling more, consuming more and excreting more.” These affluent and unsustainable consumptions have resulted in significantly higher carbon, water, air and energy footprints, compounding environmental challenges.
Environmental impacts are not of the homogeneous category: neither in terms of scale nor in terms of form. Human-induced multifaceted environmental crises contribute to overall climate change and also cause localised environmental problems such as air and water pollution, groundwater depletion, solid waste accumulation, human displacement due to infrastructural projects such as dams and mines. While carbon dioxide (CO2) is a truly “global” problem, the impact of air pollution and water consumption (or water pollution) are more regional. It has been established that footprints for the three most important variables (CO2, PM2.5 and water) shoot up dramatically with the rise of consumption.
Dietary choices among affluent households create other kinds of impacts as well. High–protein diets featuring imported meats, exotic fruits, and premium nuts demand intensive water, and energy inputs, increasing emission of greenhouse gases and exacerbating food security challenges. It is also noted that the environmental impacts measured and attributed to affluent consumption by a very small fraction (say, top 10 per cent) hugely hamper the “decent living standards” of at least the bottom 50 per cent of population. Thus, local/regional environmental limits ~ be it air pollution, groundwater level depletion or biodiversity loss ~ are clearly being breached today, when a fraction of the population is enjoying affluence. The impact would be unimaginably serious.
Conspicuous and luxury consumptions exacerbate environmental impacts by intensifying resource demands. For example, the rise of demand for marble or other luxury stones for upscale housing projects has led to excessive mining, depleting groundwater levels, generating dust pollution and degrading local ecosystems. Likewise, energy-intensive luxury appliances such as large air-conditioning systems, place enormous strain on electricity grids and increase reliance on fossil fuels, contributing to climate change and increasing local air pollution. Indeed, environmental costs are deeply embedded in high-level consumptions. Now the big question that haunts us all is whether the goal of “decent living for all” is actually environmentally sustainable at all.
Scientists as well as environmentalists continue to warn us regularly of the perils of unsustainable practices of consuming resources and its alarming impacts on the environment. They have evolved a formula, popularly known as PAT formula, which helps us appreciate some of the crucial relationships behind environmental degradation: I = P x A x T. In this equation I is the Environmental Impact.
P is the Population, A is the material throughput associated with Affluence (itself defined as capital stock per capita), and T (Technology) is the environmental impact per unit of energy used to produce the material throughput. By substituting definitions for A and T the formula can be put precisely as: Impact = Population x (Capital Stock/ Person x Throughput/ Capital Stock) x (Energy/ Throughput x Environmental Impact / Energy). It is obvious that environmental degradation is not the result of increased population (P), or increased affluence (A), or the introduction of less environmentally friendly technology (T). It is the product of all three. The framework of conspicuous or luxury consumption inherently encompasses these three parameters. Luxury lifestyle is deeply embedded in socio-cultural markers such as caste, religions, and rituals, positioning high value goods as symbols of identity and status.
These patterns complicate efforts to align aspirations with sustainability. Hence, it is often advised that cultural movements prioritizing mental health, community engagements, and work-life balance can help shift societal values from consumerism to more meaningful pursuits. At the same time, comprehensive macro policies limiting material consumptions and enabling sustainable lifestyles are essential to reshape consumption patterns. Given a large section of the population is in poverty, the popular narrative has been that “let us focus on getting rid of poverty before we talk of the environment.”
This not only ignores the fact that the poor face the brunt of environmental degradation but also conveniently hides the extreme and rising inequalities of wealth and consumption in society. At any rate, understanding patterns of consumption and their socio-environmental impacts is just a part of the story. Exploring the socio-psychological and cultural underpinnings of high consumption calls for mixed-method approaches. Indeed, changing lifestyles is an enormously challenging task.
But we firmly believe that reframing societal conceptions of the “good life” is imperative to address these challenges. The current paradigm of success linked to material accumulation must give way to frameworks prioritising sufficiency, ecological balance, and well-being. Ultimately, to address the ecological and societal impacts of luxury and detrimental consumptions we can hardly afford to ignore the sane advice of Mahatma Gandhi: “The Earth has enough resources to meet the needs of all but not enough to satisfy the greed of even one person.”