The democratic potential of political consumerism: The effect of visibility bias and social stratification
| Date | 01 January 2022 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0192512120935931 |
| Author | Silke Goubin,Marc Hooghe |
| Published date | 01 January 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0192512120935931
International Political Science Review
2022, Vol. 43(1) 19 –35
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0192512120935931
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The democratic potential of
political consumerism: The effect
of visibility bias and social
stratification
Marc Hooghe and Silke Goubin
University of Leuven, Belgium
Abstract
Political consumerism, that is, the buying or boycotting of goods and services for political or ethical reasons,
is now firmly accepted as a form of political participation increasingly adopted by the young. In this article
we investigate two claims often made concerning the democratic potential of political consumerism. First,
visibility bias would imply that political consumerism mainly targets visible and often symbolic goods, without
real economic impact. Our results suggest that participants indeed tend to focus on goods, and neglect
services, despite the growing importance of the service sector. Second, it has been argued that political
consumerism is only a weapon for the ‘happy few’. Our results indeed show that especially higher educated
and progressive respondents tend to use political consumerism. Although our findings are based on specific
samples in Belgium, and therefore cannot be generalised, we close with some observations on the broader
democratic impact of political consumerism.
Keywords
Political participation, political consumerism, Belgium, services, stratification
Introduction
The rise of political consumerism as a form of non-institutionalised political participation has
increasingly gained attention in public opinion research. It has been argued that citizens articulate
political demands through consumption choices for specific goods or products. By making these
choices, citizens indicate that they prefer certain market or political practices to be changed.
Indeed, there is a growing consensus within the political science literature that political consumer-
ism should be regarded as an integral part of the political participation repertoire of contemporary
citizens (Van Deth, 2014).
In the literature on political consumerism, various arguments have been put forward to defend
the democratic potential of political consumerism (Copeland, 2014b; Stolle and Micheletti, 2013).
Corresponding author:
Marc Hooghe, Center for Citizenship and Democracy, University of Leuven, Parkstraat 45, Leuven, B-3000, Belgium.
Email: Marc.Hooghe@soc.kuleuven.be
935931IPS0010.1177/0192512120935931International Political Science ReviewHooghe and Goubin
research-article2020
Article
20 International Political Science Review 43(1)
It has been argued that political consumerism contributes to a promotion of social justice, by
emphasising concerns that do not receive sufficient attention from institutionalised political par-
ticipation. Second, political consumerism allows activists to circumvent the political system, espe-
cially in those cases when this system no longer has the capacity to respond adequately to
democratic demands from the population (Strømsnes, 2009). Third, it has been argued that exactly
because of its integration in daily routines, political consumerism brings in new groups of the
population, that are underrepresented in institutionalised participation (Stolle and Micheletti,
2013). By allowing underrepresented groups of the population to bring their issues to the forefront,
without being dependent on the political system, political consumerism is seen as an important
form of democratic innovation (Copeland, 2014a).
However, the trend toward political consumerism has also been met with more sceptical coun-
ter-arguments. Questions have been raised about the real impact of ethical consumerism (Omidvar
and Giannakas, 2015). Within the field of political science, a major concern is that acts of political
consumerism are not always fully informed: due to what might be labelled as a visibility bias,
political consumers often focus on products that are visible and identifiable, such as organic food
or sports clothing. The case of using illegally mined coltan in smartphones, for instance, shows that
it is more difficult to launch a political consumer campaign about practices that are more harmful,
but that are less visible or relatable (Nest, 2011). Political consumers tend to react to emotional
messages, it is argued, without necessarily targeting really harmful practices (Delacote and
Montagné-Huck, 2012; Gundelach, 2020). A second important counter-argument is that political
consumerism remains a weapon of the happy few: as, for example., fair-trade products, mostly are
more expensive than products from the mainstream agricultural industry, only a small group of the
population will be able to use its consumer practices as a method to express its political opinions
(Acik, 2013). If these counterarguments are empirically correct, they limit the democratic potential
of political consumerism.
In this study we investigate the validity of these two arguments. For the visibility bias, we focus
on the difference between goods and services, as by definition goods can be readily observed and
are easier to relate to. For the inequality argument, we assess the social stratification of partici-
pants. In order to expand the external validity of our findings, we rely on two different studies, that
were both conducted in Belgium.
The main findings of the analysis are that consumers make a distinction between goods and
services in political consumerism decisions. The occurrence of a visibility bias suggests that visible
goods are more likely to be targeted, despite the fact that the service industry can have a huge
environmental and/or social impact (Buckley, 2012). We add to the research on stratification by
confirming a strong education bias, but also by showing that political consumerism is concentrated
on one side of the political spectrum.
The democratic potential of political consumerism
Within the literature, one can observe a lively debate about the democratic potential of political
consumerism. Proponents argue that taking into account ethical and political issues in consumer
behaviour is an important step toward a personal way to take responsibility (Stolle and Micheletti,
2013). When citizens assume that political organisations are no longer able to bring about social
change, a possible outcome is that they rely on individual resources to express preferences about
fairness or ecology (Kyroglou and Henn, 2017: 2). In some cases, this might even lead to abandon-
ing political organisations altogether (Earl et al., 2017). Initially, attempts to conceptualise political
consumerism as a form of political participation were met with quite some scepticism, and the
subtitle of a much quoted 2001 conference paper, ‘Towards a Theory of Everything?’, is revealing
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