Written by Loise Hedberg and Jonathan Olsson.
The corona crisis has spread rapidly through Sweden. Something else which has simultaneously spread through our country is the depleting of shelves in supermarkets and pharmacies. While some things are consumed in larger quantities (toilet paper, pasta, medicines), other things are consumed in smaller quantities (flights to Thailand, cinema tickets, events). This is a perfect opportunity for individuals to reflect on the drastic change of their consumption pattern. Does buying more things really make you happier? Are you unhappier because you miss the things that you no longer buy?
Consumption is essential for how our high living standards have been achieved and are kept maintained; how we eat, live, travel, socialize and dress ourselves. Common to all sorts of consumption is that it should enhance your life, reduce obstacles, and contribute to an increased well-being — this is the purpose of consumption. Could it be that you sometimes consume without having this purpose in mind? In that case, it is a good idea to identify when it happens and why, since it could have an overall negative impact - both on yourself and on society as a whole.
Perhaps you are one of many who have bought more wine, had digital hangouts with your friends or has been forced to cancel a trip abroad due to the coronavirus outbreak. Many feelings arise from the drastic changes of plans that affect us all, but a positive consequence is that we get a break from our everyday stress, and get more time to reflect. We want to encourage you to seize this opportunity to evaluate your new way of consuming. This can lead to discoveries that increase your well-being even after the pandemic.
The notion that more consumption necessarily does not lead to increased happiness has support in economic research. The relative income hypothesis, first developed by James Duesenberry, is highly relevant today. It states that the utility or satisfaction of an individual from a certain consumption level does not depend on the absolute level of consumption, but instead on how it compares to the average consumption of society. In other words, how much you enjoy your consumption depends on how much you consume in relation to others. Furthermore, we also tend to care about our past consumption levels, and compare our current consumption levels with our past ones. A phenomenon not completely unlike drug addiction, where consuming less than you are used to give you negative effects, and only higher levels of consumption give you the same degree of satisfaction as before. This is in line with the Easterlin paradox, which states that the average happiness is constant in the long run, despite great increases in GDP per capita. Data from many countries support this notion to this today. So while a higher level of income and consumption may increase your well-being in the short run, it seems that they might not matter in the long run.
The time and money you can save from consuming less can instead be invested in relations, developing new capabilities and work towards long term goals. Happiness Economics is a field that analyzes how economic factors such as income and unemployment relate to personal wellbeing. While happiness increases with income to a certain level, other factors rise in importance as income rises. After a certain level of income, the quality of one’s work, working hours, health and spare time activities play a significantly larger role. Economist Richard Laynard has also suggested that the single most important factor for long term happiness is the quality of one’s personal relations.
Many people live with the view that sustainable consumption is a matter of sacrifice, that you must compromise with your personal wellbeing in exchange for that of the planet. While this is enough motivation for some to reconsider their current consumption, research shows that this tradeoff is not always accurate, that there are benefits for individual wellbeing as well. These benefits of reflecting on and adapting consumption behavior need to be brought to light. Climate change consequences like hurricanes and floods are seldom palpable enough for Swedish consumers to connect those consequences to their consumption. Instead of externally forcing people to adapt a new approach to consumption, we are arguing for focusing on the internal motivation; that consumers could actually benefit from a different approach to consumption in terms of an increased wellbeing.
The abrupt pause of our daily habits due to the corona crisis brings an opportunity to reflect about which consumption that originates from yourself and which originates from the influence of others. This reflection does not necessarily have to result in less consumption, but rather more purposeful consumption. Thinking about how your consumption has been forced to change now, you have an opportunity to identify whether you feel better or worse with yourself, and what consumption habits you can attribute to that change. Is it the coffee with your colleagues that you can’t have anymore that makes you happy, or the fact that you have a closet full of toilet paper and pasta? Reflect upon your consumption – not necessarily because Greta Thunberg says so, but for your own wellbeing.
Photograph by Fanny Lundvall.