Abstract
Political consumerism features prominently as an increasing form of non-institutionalized and individualized political participation. The main challenge of empirical participation research is to integrate emerging alternative forms such as political consumerism into standard measurement instruments of participation. So far, serious deficits of existing survey instruments prevent political scientists to adequately assess the role of political consumerism within the repertoire of political participation. Originally apolitical activities such as conscious purchasing behaviour are all too easily interpreted as political participation, which undermines the political science concept of political participation. The aim of this article therefore is the presentation of an empirical research strategy to analyse political consumerism as an emerging form of political participation. I use a purposively designed online survey with more than 3500 randomly selected participants to analyse and reconcile current deficits of the empirical measurement of political consumerism as emerging form of political participation. Based on the empirical insights gained by our survey, I propose an innovative measurement instrument for political consumerism to be used in international comparative survey research.
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Notes
A common objection to this conceptualization of political consumerism based on political motives is that definitions of traditional political participation do not require the political activity to be guided by political motives: Voting is conceived of as political participation with political implications and consequences, regardless whether the act of voting is motivated by political or any other reasons. In contrast, consumption in itself is a non-political activity. It becomes political only by political motives and objectives driving consumption behaviour. See van Deth (2014, 359–360) for the entire argument.
European Social Survey round 8 (2016), weighted proportions.
For an exception see Gundelach (2020).
Besides international surveys, there are some specific national surveys, which include questions on political consumerism. Whereas most of them just copy the survey instruments used in international surveys and thus do not resolve the main three problems mentioned above (e.g. ALLBUS), there are a few original surveys with innovative and more comprehensive survey questions to measure political consumerism (e.g. the Swedish Consumption and Societal Issues Survey, the US-American National Civic Engagement Survey or the Swiss MOSAiCH survey 2017).
Respondents could also opt for a “Paper and Pencil”—version of the questionnaire. 646 respondents returned the survey on paper.
I thank an anonymous reviewer who suggested this additional analysis.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Deborah Kalte and Daniel Kübler for a successful and pleasant cooperation in the research project. I also thank Deborah Kalte and Eri Bertsou for valuable comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.
Funding
This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation [Project Number: 10001A_169156].
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Gundelach, B. Political Consumerism as a Form of Political Participation: Challenges and Potentials of Empirical Measurement. Soc Indic Res 151, 309–327 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-020-02371-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-020-02371-2