Young political consumers between the individual and the collective: evidence from the UK and Greece

ABSTRACT

The perceived surge of young people's interest and engagement in politics as a result of their pro-environmental attitudes and cosmopolitan orientation has been recently well-documented. However, one form of youth political participation which remains particularly understudied is political consumerism. Consequently, we still know relatively little about what motivates young people to engage in it, or the extent to which these motivations vary across countries. Although previous literature perceives political consumerism as a primarily individualistic form of political participation, we argue that such conceptualisations underestimate the growth of political communities of citizens-consumers. Using a unique survey of 634 young people aged 18–29, we examine the diversity of personal motivations and the personality outreach of young political consumers in a country of the European north (the United Kingdom), and one of the European south (Greece). The data reveal that young political consumers are operating less from an exclusively individualist position and more from a ‘connected’ one. Indeed, their personality orientation outlook reaches beyond their immediate local communities, to an ever-expanding global imagined community. In turn, their motivations seem to expand even further, involving also the animal kingdom and the wider environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth participation
• environmental politics
• environmental citizenship
• political consumerism
• ethical consumption

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Ethical invisibles involve the consumption of goods or services which may exist irrespectively, and whether they will be classified as such depends entirely on the intentions of the consumer when they purchase them. Examples of ethical invisibles include using public means of transport for environmental reasons, buying locally to support the local economy, buying second-hand clothing or simply consuming less (Harrison, Newholm, and Shaw 2005, 97).

2 Given the exploratory nature of this study, such a sample size seemed reasonable. A scoping study of previous research indicated similar sample sizes. For instance, Stolle and Micheletti (2006) based their seminal research on a sample of 372 university students from Canada, 284 from Sweden, and 187 from Belgium.

3 Resource link available at: www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSOnline.jsp

4 The actual survey questions used for both the dependent variables and also the independent variables are presented in full in Appendix 1.

5 Resource link available at: www.data.worldbank.org