IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/sustdv/v18y2010i3p123-134.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Creating sustainable identities: the significance of the financially affluent self

Author

Listed:
  • Victoria Hurth

    (Exeter University, UK)

Abstract

This paper uses identity theory and postmodern identity perspectives to analyse why high-income groups often have values, attitudes and intentions to consume sustainably, yet tend to have the highest energy consumption of any group. Two key arguments are presented. The first is that the affluent identity is opposed to the environmentalist identity and is more salient, desirable and likely to result in more social support and self-esteem rewards. Therefore, where both identities are held the affluent identity is likely to be more dominant and invoked in more circumstances. Second, the invocation of the affluent identity is liable to result in high-energy consumption. Despite some evidence of affluent identities being successfully connected by marketing with low-energy 'green' consumption, there is stronger evidence of the affluent identity being consistently embedded symbolically within high-energy consumption choices. Recommendations for marketing and social marketing are made and a matrix to guide sustainable identity strategies is proposed. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.

Suggested Citation

  • Victoria Hurth, 2010. "Creating sustainable identities: the significance of the financially affluent self," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(3), pages 123-134.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:18:y:2010:i:3:p:123-134
    DOI: 10.1002/sd.453
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/sd.453
    File Function: Link to full text; subscription required
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/sd.453?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Vringer, Kees & Blok, Kornelis, 1995. "The direct and indirect energy requirements of households in the Netherlands," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 23(10), pages 893-910, October.
    2. Burney, Nadeem A., 1995. "Socioeconomic development and electricity consumption A cross-country analysis using the random coefficient method," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(3), pages 185-195, July.
    3. Christopher, Andrew N. & Schlenker, Barry R., 2000. "The impact of perceived material wealth and perceiver personality on first impressions," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 21(1), pages 1-19, February.
    4. Schipper, Lee & Ting, Michael & Khrushch, Marta & Golove, William, 1997. "The evolution of carbon dioxide emissions from energy use in industrialized countries: an end-use analysis," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 25(7-9), pages 651-672.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jiří Pospíšil & Helena Pospíšilová & Ludmila Trochtová, 2022. "The Catalogue of Leisure Activities: A New Structured Values and Content Based Instrument for Leisure Research Usable for Social Development and Community Planning," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(5), pages 1-23, February.
    2. Robert Hay, 2010. "The relevance of ecocentrism, personal development and transformational leadership to sustainability and identity," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(3), pages 163-171.
    3. Büchs, Milena & Schnepf, Sylke V., 2013. "Who emits most? Associations between socio-economic factors and UK households' home energy, transport, indirect and total CO2 emissions," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 114-123.
    4. Lars Strannegård & Peter Dobers, 2010. "Unstable identities: stable unsustainability," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 18(3), pages 119-122.
    5. Jean-Noël Kapferer & Anne Michaut-Denizeau, 2020. "Are millennials really more sensitive to sustainable luxury? A cross-generational international comparison of sustainability consciousness when buying luxury," Journal of Brand Management, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 27(1), pages 35-47, January.
    6. Hongwu Zhang & Lequan Zhang & Keying Wang & Xunpeng Shi, 2019. "Unveiling Key Drivers of Indirect Carbon Emissions of Chinese Older Households," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-17, October.
    7. Buchs, Milena & Schnepf, Sylke V., 2013. "UK Households' Carbon Footprint: A Comparison of the Association between Household Characteristics and Emissions from Home Energy, Transport and Other Goods and Services," IZA Discussion Papers 7204, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Bina, Olivia & Vaz, Sofia Guedes, 2011. "Humans, environment and economies: From vicious relationships to virtuous responsibility," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 170-178.
    9. Coral M. Bruni & P. Wesley Schultz & Anna Woodcock, 2021. "The Balanced Structure of Environmental Identity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(15), pages 1-18, July.
    10. Peterval E. Ozougwu & Christian N. Madu & Johnbosco C. Chukwuorji & Augustine O. Ozougwu & Stella U. Ozougwu, 2023. "Environmental Identities and Attitude towards Crude Oil Pipeline Vandalism in Niger Delta Oil-Producing Communities," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(6), pages 1-19, March.
    11. Font Vivanco, David & Kemp, René & van der Voet, Ester, 2016. "How to deal with the rebound effect? A policy-oriented approach," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 114-125.
    12. Pasi Heikkurinen & Tarja Ketola, 2012. "Corporate Responsibility and Identity: from a Stakeholder to an Awareness Approach," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(5), pages 326-337, July.
    13. Anna Claudelin & Ville Uusitalo & Ilona Hintukainen & Anna Kuokkanen & Paavo Tertsunen & Maija Leino & Lassi Linnanen, 2020. "Increasing positive climate impact by combining anti‐consumption and consumption changes with impact investing," Sustainable Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 28(6), pages 1689-1701, November.
    14. Dorota Domalewska, 2021. "A Longitudinal Analysis of the Creation of Environmental Identity and Attitudes towards Energy Sustainability Using the Framework of Identity Theory and Big Data Analysis," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(3), pages 1-12, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lenzen, Manfred & Wier, Mette & Cohen, Claude & Hayami, Hitoshi & Pachauri, Shonali & Schaeffer, Roberto, 2006. "A comparative multivariate analysis of household energy requirements in Australia, Brazil, Denmark, India and Japan," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 181-207.
    2. Buchs, Milena & Schnepf, Sylke V., 2013. "UK Households' Carbon Footprint: A Comparison of the Association between Household Characteristics and Emissions from Home Energy, Transport and Other Goods and Services," IZA Discussion Papers 7204, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Azevedo, I. & Leal, V., 2021. "A new model for ex-post quantification of the effects of local actions for climate change mitigation," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    4. Nallapaneni Manoj Kumar & Aneesh A. Chand & Maria Malvoni & Kushal A. Prasad & Kabir A. Mamun & F.R. Islam & Shauhrat S. Chopra, 2020. "Distributed Energy Resources and the Application of AI, IoT, and Blockchain in Smart Grids," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-42, November.
    5. Ramanathan, Ramakrishnan, 2005. "An analysis of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions in countries of the Middle East and North Africa," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 30(15), pages 2831-2842.
    6. Islam, Aminul & Chan, Eng-Seng & Taufiq-Yap, Yun Hin & Mondal, Md. Alam Hossain & Moniruzzaman, M. & Mridha, Moniruzzaman, 2014. "Energy security in Bangladesh perspective—An assessment and implication," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 32(C), pages 154-171.
    7. Pottier, Antonin, 2022. "Expenditure elasticity and income elasticity of GHG emissions: A survey of literature on household carbon footprint," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 192(C).
    8. Bakirtas, Tahsin & Akpolat, Ahmet Gokce, 2018. "The relationship between energy consumption, urbanization, and economic growth in new emerging-market countries," Energy, Elsevier, vol. 147(C), pages 110-121.
    9. Schröder, Carsten & Rehdanz, Katrin & Narita, Daiju & Okubo, Toshihiro, 2013. "Household formation and residential energy demand: Evidence from Japan," Kiel Working Papers 1836, Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).
    10. Oikonomou, Vlasis & Rietbergen, Martijn & Patel, Martin, 2007. "An ex-ante evaluation of a White Certificates scheme in The Netherlands: A case study for the household sector," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 1147-1163, February.
    11. Pachauri, Shonali, 2004. "An analysis of cross-sectional variations in total household energy requirements in India using micro survey data," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(15), pages 1723-1735, October.
    12. Roca, Jordi & Serrano, Monica, 2007. "Income growth and atmospheric pollution in Spain: An input-output approach," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 230-242, June.
    13. Pedro Linares & Xavier Labandeira, 2010. "Energy Efficiency: Economics And Policy," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 24(3), pages 573-592, July.
    14. Saez, Emmanuel & Stantcheva, Stefanie, 2018. "A simpler theory of optimal capital taxation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 162(C), pages 120-142.
    15. Gupta, Monika, 2016. "Willingness to pay for carbon tax: A study of Indian road passenger transport," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 46-54.
    16. Jeroen Klomp & Jakob Haan, 2010. "Central bank independence and inflation revisited," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 144(3), pages 445-457, September.
    17. Jumbe, Charles B. L., 2004. "Cointegration and causality between electricity consumption and GDP: empirical evidence from Malawi," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 61-68, January.
    18. Qu, Jiansheng & Zeng, Jingjing & Li, Yan & Wang, Qin & Maraseni, Tek & Zhang, Lihua & Zhang, Zhiqiang & Clarke-Sather, Abigail, 2013. "Household carbon dioxide emissions from peasants and herdsmen in northwestern arid-alpine regions, China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 133-140.
    19. Wolde-Rufael, Yemane, 2006. "Electricity consumption and economic growth: a time series experience for 17 African countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(10), pages 1106-1114, July.
    20. Zhang, Chi & Zhou, Kaile & Yang, Shanlin & Shao, Zhen, 2017. "On electricity consumption and economic growth in China," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 353-368.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:sustdv:v:18:y:2010:i:3:p:123-134. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1002/(ISSN)1099-1719 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.