Psychological roots of political consumerism: Personality traits and participation in boycott and buycott
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512120959683 |
| Author | Birte Gundelach,Kathrin Ackermann |
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512120959683
International Political Science Review
2022, Vol. 43(1) 36 –54
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512120959683
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Psychological roots of political
consumerism: Personality
traits and participation in
boycott and buycott
Kathrin Ackermann
Heidelberg University, Germany
Birte Gundelach
Centre for Democracy Studies Aarau, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Abstract
Political consumerism is currently one of the most prevalent forms of non-institutionalized political
engagement in Western democracies. This article aims to understand its psychological roots. We expect
interindividual differences in psychological dispositions to be particularly relevant for political consumerism
due to the individualized and cause-oriented nature of this form of political action. Our empirical evidence
supports this claim: Open people favour, and conscientious people avoid, boycotting and buycotting.
Agreeable persons tend to avoid boycotting in particular. These relationships persist even when political
and social attitudes are controlled for. Thus, we show that psychological factors play an important role in
shaping politically conscious consumption behaviour. At the same time, our study points out that personality
profiles vary across different forms of political consumerism and modes of political action more generally.
The characteristics of the diverse modes may help to understand this variation.
Keywords
Political consumerism, political participation, Big Five, personality traits, political psychology
Introduction
In the last decades, we have been witnessing a diversification of political action in established
democracies. Highly individualized forms of participation have gained momentum, while tradi-
tional and institutionalized forms of participation are on the decline. Alongside different forms of
online participation, political consumerism is the most established and researched contribution to
the expanding repertoire of political action (Copeland, 2014b; Copeland and Boulianne, 2020; de
Corresponding author:
Kathrin Ackermann, Heidelberg University, Bergheimer Straße 58, 69115 Heidelberg, Germany.
Email: kathrin.ackermann@ipw.uni-heidelberg
959683IPS0010.1177/0192512120959683International Political Science ReviewAckermann and Gundelach
research-article2020
Article
Ackermann and Gundelach 37
Moor and Balsiger, 2019; Gundelach, 2020a; Koos, 2012; Neilson, 2010; Newman and Bartels,
2011; Stolle and Micheletti, 2013). In this article, we contribute to the understanding of political
consumerism by examining its psychological roots and study how personality traits relate to differ-
ent forms of political consumerism.
Focusing on the psychological underpinnings of political consumerism is particularly relevant
due to the individualized and cause-oriented character of this form of participation. In comparison
with institutionalized forms of political participation, political consumerism is ‘citizen-created
action involving people taking charge of matters that they themselves deem important’ (Micheletti,
2003: 25). Instead of using established political structures and procedures for political engagement,
political consumption behaviour is self-initiated and practised alone or collectively beyond repre-
sentative democratic structures. Political consumers take political responsibility personally instead
of delegating it to political leaders (Micheletti, 2003: 25). Thus, individual characteristics, such as
sociodemographic and socioeconomic factors, like gender, education, or age, as well as attitudes
and values, like political interest, are decisive for the decision to become a politically active con-
sumer (Copeland and Boulianne, 2020). By investigating the role of personality traits, we focus on
other individual factors that have proven to be relevant for political participation (Cawvey et al.,
2017). However, the influence of personality traits varies across different forms of participation
and scholars have not yet fully understood this variation. We assume that the characteristics of the
modes of political action matter and argue that, for political consumerism as an individualized
form of participation, psychological dispositions should be particularly relevant. In comparison
with collective forms of political action, like protests or activities in parties and organizations,
individualized forms, like buycott and boycott, depend less on mobilization through networks and
direct contacts and can be undertaken independently from others. Thus, we argue that individual
dispositions, like caring about others or striving for new experiences, are essential for this kind of
political action. Individualized forms of political participation might serve to satisfy individual
psychological needs immediately and to reduce cognitive dissonances between dispositions and
behaviour. Therefore, it is important to consider fundamental psychological differences in explain-
ing political consumerism.
More generally, studying the psychological roots of boycott and buycott brings us closer to an
encompassing understanding of politically conscious consumption behaviour. Since personality
traits are relatively stable over time and situations, they also help us to understand differences we
observe between individual’s reactions to similar situations. In other words, personality might be
key to understand why individuals within the same contextual environment or with similar
resources and network access as well as attitudes and values reveal differing participatory behav-
iour (Mondak, 2010). Yet, the role of psychological dispositions for political consumer behaviour
has hardly been studied. As a recent meta-analysis shows, personality traits are not part of the
standard repertoire to explain political consumerism and have received much less attention than
sociodemographic or attitudinal factors (Copeland and Boulianne, 2020). Thus, we do not know
whether personality traits matter for political consumerism beyond their influence through values,
attitudes and orientations. We will examine this empirical question to gain a better understanding
of the psychological roots of political consumerism. This might in turn also help to develop more
effective strategies of mobilization.
Finally, we will show that it is important to study how personality traits relate to different forms
of political consumerism. By and large, existing studies consider only one form of political consum-
erism, namely boycott, among many other forms of political participation (Gallego and Oberski,
2012; Ha et al., 2013).1 Paying heed to recent suggestions to differentiate at least two forms of politi-
cal consumerism, we use boycotting and buycotting as the most frequent and known examples of
political consumerism in our analysis (Zorell, 2019). This is an advance compared with most studies
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