Abstract
The consumption of natural resources is rapidly emerging as a major social problem, and social efforts to control this consumption are guided in part by research that tries to specify the meaning of resources to consumers. This paper compares a sociological perspective with the more widespread economic model of consumption, using data from study of billing systems, sociocultural status, and household energy use in a California apartment complex. The research suggests that the role of marginal price in ordering consumption can be interpreted as a contingent feature of the socially structured relationship between consumption and social status. It also suggests that the utility of a technology is a secondary and emergent product of its use, a fact obscured by the conventional analytic separation of supply and demand or means and ends.
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Hackett, B., Lutzenhiser, L. Social structures and economic conduct: Interpreting variations in household energy consumption. Sociol Forum 6, 449–470 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01114472
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01114472