(00:01):
Well, I'm in over my head. No one told me trying to keep my footprint small was harder than I thought it could be. I'm in over my head. What do I really need? Trying to save the planet over someone, please save me trying to save the planet over. Is someone please me?

(00:25):
Welcome to move my head. I'm Michael Bartz. My guest today is Dr. Michael SW Lee. Dr. Lee is an associate professor of marketing at the University of Auckland business school. He's an award-winning teacher of marketing strategy, consumer behaviour and contemporary issues in marketing. His research focuses on brand avoidance, consumer resistance and activism, and most notably anti-consumption where he's the director of the international center of anti-consumption research. His work has been published in the journal of business research, applied psychology, the journal of consumer behavior and more Dr. Lee regularly provides expert commentary to the media and has been featured in the New York Times, the Huffington Post and the BBC. Welcome to in over my head, Dr. Lee.

(01:09):
Thanks for having me, looking forward to this.

(01:11):
So in talking about the, just transition, we cover poverty and equality, and this got me thinking about money and how our spending affects climate change. I've been very public about living happily with less, but I'm not sure if it would scale. So I'm excited to talk with you about the research on anti-consumption and learn more about this from a scientific perspective, perhaps to start. Can you define what you mean by anti-consumption?

(01:32):
Sure. That's a good question. Before I jump into defining anti-consumption, let's take a step back and think about consumption. So scientifically or from a theoretical perspective, consumption involves three main stages, acquisition use and disposal. So by default, then anti-consumption is the meaningful and intentional rejection of those three steps. So acquisition use or disposal. And if we think about those three steps, then anti-consumption is the meaningful and intentional rejection reduction or reclaiming of some goods or services within the consumption cycle.

(02:15):
And so it's not about not ever buying anything. So what does that look like practically, like in, in the day-to-day,

(02:21):
The easiest example is the whole not buying of something. That's the rejection part. And that's typically what people think of when they think of anti-consumption, a person rejecting, you know, the latest fashion or rejecting a Humvee, something like that. So that's the, the sort of on the face really obvious stuff. But in terms of reduction, we could also consider that some aspects of anti-consumption involve reducing where rejection may not be possible. So for example, reducing, I dunno, energy usage. It's very difficult for most people to completely reject electricity in the traditional form. And finally, the one that people don't normally think of is reclaiming. So the reclaiming of some aspect of the consumption cycle, and typically this is most obvious in the disposal aspect of the consumption cycle. You know, recycling is, is a good one, but also reusing certain things. And so by doing that, that is also a form of anti-consumption because what you're doing there is that you're rejecting the part of the consumption cycle that keeps the mass production-consumption cycle ticking over. If a lot of people stopped buying into the disposal aspect, which is the final part of the consumption cycle, then that is also a form of anti-consumption. So to speak.

(03:34):
That disposable side of things really interests me. So you've researched this aspect of anti-consumption then?

(03:40):
Yes. So waste utilization is a sort of an emerging area of mine. I've spent most of my career on the the first two parts because that's the most obvious part. So a lot of research on the rejection aspect, a little bit more thinking and sort of the used aspect. And now moving towards that sort of disposal, part of the consumption chain, I have colleagues and other people in the international center for anti-consumption research to look at, you know, things like garage sales. I don't know what you call them in North America, if you call 'em garage sales yard sales, maybe. And, and so obviously that's a very good example of anti-consumption, even though at the face value, you wouldn't think it is because there's people buying stuff, but really what's happening there is that they're buying things outside of the mainstream capitalistic system. And so in, in that sense, they're, they're sort of avoiding or rejecting that part of capitalism because every, every secondhand product you buy is the profit. That's not going to the multinational that made that product in the first place. Right? And there's all sorts of things that happen where buying a secondhand good from a yard sale or a garage sale is an implicit sort of rejection of this sort of mainstream consumer society.

(04:43):
We could talk a bit about what the first aspects that you mentioned, like avoidance. Do you wanna talk a bit about that?

(04:49):
Yeah. So rejection, as I mentioned before is sort of the most obvious manifestation of anti-consumption. That is the classic anti-consumer that we think of a person standing outside. I don't know, the world trade organization during some sort of summit saying no free trade, no free trade or person protesting outside a Starbucks or, or Nike or McDonald's, that's the classic sort of image we have. And that's probably what inspired me to study anti-consumption way back when I started my Ph.D. It was because, I personally couldn't understand people liked that. In saying that I wasn't a hardcore consumer. I was kind of the middle of the road, average citizen living in a westernized society where, you know, I appreciated the comfortable life that consumption and capitalism afforded to me. So I couldn't understand why these people were getting so worked up about a Starbucks opening on the high street or, or a big box retailer moving into the neighbourhood.

(05:37):
And so that got me kind of reading the work of Naomi Klein. So I probably credit her with dipping up my toe into this anti-consumption, anti-globalization sort of area. And as I sort of got more and more involved in anti-consumption, I came to realize that it wasn't just these hardcore people with the placards and throwing bricks through the Starbucks window, anti-consumption could actually coexist with consumption. So that was probably a turning point in the area and in my own personal career, because up to that point, people kind of had a really binary view. You're either an anti-consumer or you're a consumer, actually, most of us are in between. So I am not a hardcore anti-consumer even, even though I study it, but there are aspects of my life where anti-consumption is more present and that drives or motivates me to behave in a certain way.

(06:24):
And there are other parts of my life where consumption preferences and motivations pull me toward certain products or services. And it's the sort of balance this yin and yang between the two is the approach that I take towards anti-consumption, trying to convince both business practitioners and everyday citizens that it's actually attention of. The two things that can occur simultaneously. A great example is the single use plastic, right? Where maybe if we wind back the clock 15 years there would've been hardcore anti-consumers or consumer activists that were a hundred percent against these plastic bags, right? Because they saw the pollution problem eventuated. And so those hardcore people behaved like that already decades ago, but now we fast forward two decades. Most people, most mainstream consumers try to reject, or at least the very least reduce use of single-use plastic. And so what we see is that even though the hardcore, these extreme consumers are a very small minority of the population.

(07:26):
Part of the argument for studying anti-consumers is that they often are great sort of like a Canary in a coal mine, so to speak, they predict the trends of the future. And we see this happening again and again. So single-use plastics is one example, but we also have vegetarianism and veganism. All the various dietary sort of movements are all essentially driven by anti-consumption, more than consumption. A lot of average people are anti-consumers as well. So a person that tries to reduce plastic, uses a person that tries to reduce energy use, particularly with the pandemic. Now, people that are trying to stay working from home, even though we could go back to work, a lot of people are thinking, well, hang on is a really great use of energy and time to be travelling in traffic. And so they're trying to reduce that aspect of vehicle and fuel consumption.

(08:13):
Yeah. And that makes sense too, as far as just economically or from a resource perspective, for sure. And I came across the term voluntary simplicity in your research, is that kind of the same thing as an anti-consumer or are they different?

(08:25):
So voluntary simplification is kind of a sub-topic of anti-consumption. So, you know, with anti-consumption that may also include something like boycotting, right? Or consumer activism were people really, those hardcore people try to disrupt some businesses, but then you've got another concept like voluntary simplification, which is a milder form of anti-consumption from a sort of an adversarial perspective, but it's still quite an extreme form of anti-consumption in the sense that it is a lifestyle choice that would change a person that's truly committed to this voluntary simplification lifestyle. And I guess the definition itself is within the term, someone that voluntarily simplifies their life and this usually means they are taking a step back from the rat race. It could mean, you know, to draw, I guess, an image of a person, someone that has turned down a promotion to become chief, I dunno, financial officer or chief marketing officer, or a chief operations officer and saying actually, no it's time for me to prioritize focal objects in my life.

(09:26):
Like people, I love activities I want to do. They draw meaning from other aspects that isn't related to consumption, which typically means that they also need to dial back their commitment to work, because that is usually what pays for this consumption drive or our ability to consume. So even though it's someone that's voluntarily simplifying their life in that manner, I guess what's a little bit deceptive in the definition is that it's, it's far from simple because as, as someone like you would know, cuz I, I would probably classify you as a voluntary simplifier. Michael, you would've found that the moment you decided to simplify your life step out of the rat race. So to speak things actually got a lot more complicated for you. I imagine, you know, figuring out how to grow your own food source, how to reduce your reliance on mainstream energy, provision, water, all that sort of stuff. So it's actually, it's more complicated for the individual, but overall, I guess if you look at them from a demographic census sort of perspective, it does look like they're simplified.

(10:22):
Yeah. And for me, it also gets to the tiny house lifestyle as well. When I talked about living with less happily living with less, yes, I would absolutely qualify myself as a voluntary simplifier for other people in your research. Do you find that they intentionally get into voluntary simplicity or is it something that maybe they are pushed into? Or what does that look like?

(10:43):
So the term voluntary usually means that it has to be voluntary. It is a lifestyle choice that is reserved for a minority of the world's population. And by that I typically mean sort of the privileged Western countries, but progressively more so the, the Asian emerging economy. So it has to be intentional because otherwise, if you've been forced to simplify, then something's happened and you've lost your job or your business has gone bankrupt or there's some sort of natural disaster that's meant that you can no longer consume or work or war, for example. So usually it has to be intentional, but to go back to your question, and this is something that we grapple with as anti-consumer researchers because a lot of the data is self-report through interviews or, or even observations. But then at some point you have to ask them, you know, what drives you to do this?

(11:30):
And it's difficult for us to know whether a person has chosen to become a voluntary simplifier. And in which cases we give them the benefit of the doubt that they have chosen it. But there's also this sort of what we call a post-HOK justification, where a person finds themselves having to simplify perhaps due to a job issue or some something related to the economy, but then they in their minds do a post hoc justification of why they are simplifying. And so that's probably then starting to step away from this intentionality aspect that we require,

(12:02):
How does voluntary simplicity affect our wellbeing?

(12:06):
It is this relationship between, you know, voluntary simplification or, or minimalism, which is kind of a new trendy word for it and wellbeing, right? And so we know the research says that income and consumption will increase our wellbeing up to a certain point. But after that, it doesn't really do much. And when you start to minimize stuff or voluntarily simplify, you get that self-actualization and therefore that correlates with wellbeing. So this is well-known sort of relationship or correlation between people that are in a position to be able to become voluntary simplifiers and well-being. So this research that I did with a couple of colleagues is that we investigated the sort of circular argument there and flipped the relationship around. So to this state, it was, does voluntary simplification lead to wellbeing. Yes, it seems to, but can wellbeing lead to voluntary simplification?

(12:55):
And so what our research establishes is that yes, it can. So wellbeing is also a resource that is required for individuals to be able to practice anti-consumption. So we've flipped it around and we see this happening in everyday life. When we look at stressed people. So a person that is stressed for a community that is stressed is going to be less able to practice anti-consumption, which means that we see in stressed communities, more junk food, and less care and attention paid to their diet. Some of this is financial as well, but also things like recycling, which doesn't cost anything. But we see that people that are stressed recycle less, right? Because they're like, oh, I'm so stressed around. Who cares about the environment? I'll just throw it in the bin. So there's all these things that happen when you're in a place of well-being that enables you to actually enact anti-consumption. And this has massive recommendations obviously for the world because we need the rest of the world that is very low in wellbeing to do the anti-consumption, to prevent climate change from getting worse countries like India, Africa, South America, Russia, all those countries that are emerging are also very stressed countries where people have lower amounts of wellbeing. So no wonder they're not practicing anti-consumption.

(14:13):
You obviously work in marketing. How does anti-consumption tie into marketing?

(14:17):
Yeah, that's a great question, Michael. So when I teach my postgraduate students, I ask the question to them, can a marketer be an anti-consumer or believe in anti-consumption principles without shooting yourself in the foot as a marketer. And I get them to reflect on how anti-consumption relates to their own life as a citizen or as a person versus what they have to do when they get their job. they have to like increase growth revenue, shareholder value, all those sorts of things, fight for market share, et cetera, et cetera. And the two things are often in opposition because on the one hand, it's very intuitive and logical that anti-consumption ideology should be applicable to every citizen because it's kind of like what we need in order to survive into the future. So there's a lot of stuff that just makes sense, but once they're put on the hat of, okay, now I'm working to pay off my student loan or wanting to get that promotion so I can buy a house or move up the corporate ladder.

(15:13):
Then it becomes a lot trickier, right? Because all of a sudden they're placed in a system that isn't designed to play nicely with anti-consumption values. The best example I always use is Patagonia who have tapped into this anti-consumption ideology and have increased their market share and their ability to charge more for their product. I truly do think that at a corporate level and throughout the company, they do really believe what they're doing and they're a B Corp and all that sort of stuff that works in their favour. But also at the same time, I think that it can consumers in the marketplace can be quite cynical. They can interpret what they've done as a market positioning tactic in order to gain more market share. And in order to justify their ability to charge a price premium and to retain consumers over the long term because of their repair policy and the longevity of their product. So, you know, even though Patagonia is the best example of how marketing and anti-consumption can coexist, I'm not sure it would work if every company tried it because then they would be needing to do other things, to sort of dominate the market share, or at least carve out their niche. So it seems to be currently anti-consumption works well for a small number of companies that use that as their guiding philosophy or as a market positioning tactic, but can all marketers live by that creed? No, I'm not sure they can.

(16:34):
One thing I'm curious about is boycotting companies, cause that's some of your research. So if I don't agree with a certain company's values or their ethics or what they're doing, especially for the environment, is that effective to avoid them and not buy their products?

(16:48):
I think it is. I mean, I know some people say, you're kidding yourself. What's a couple of consumers gonna do to change a multinational. I think it does work on scale. So obviously there needs to be a certain critical mass or societal shift for companies to go, whoa, okay, hang on a second. We better do something now. And I think we see that happening. We see more and more companies at least saying, or putting in place policies, procedures, statements of what they do because they want to avoid this boycoting action that consumers can bring upon them. It's effective in that sense, in that it's forcing companies to at least acknowledge something. And at the face value, say that they're doing something about it. I guess where the sort of rubber really meets the road is what is actually happening internally within the company's processes, their supply chain, their sort of corporate governance, all, all that sort of stuff. And once they openly say that they pay attention to it, it makes it a lot harder for them to skirt around not doing it right. Cuz then people can really start to dig in and say, well, no, you, you said that this is on your website. So what's happening here, right? Boycotting a, almost like a little wedge in the door to keep the companies a little bit uncomfortable because the door is slightly a jar now. And they know that people are gonna start looking more and more into that into their area.

(18:07):
And I, I wonder, I mean, you could do both things, but I assume you could, boycott a company, but then also support a company that you think is doing the right thing.

(18:16):
Yes, yes, exactly. There's actually this concept called carrot mob, which is kind of a play on words with the flash mob and a carrot mob is a sudden act in the marketplace where all of a sudden people, consumers or activists will descend upon a company that's doing good and that's the carrot versus the stick. Right. And what they do is just like you say, they will support a company who is doing something that they believe is right. So that's the opposite of a boycott sort of scenario. So the two things as mentioned at the very beginning, anti-consumption and consumption, working simultaneously in the marketplace.

(18:50):
And on that note, it seems like there are so many petitions against transgressing brands. One of your papers looked at choice overload and boycotting. Tell me about what you found?

(19:00):
Yeah, so that was a fascinating study where we ran an experiment where we had one group of people, they were exposed to boycott calls 15 boycott calls, which sounds like a lot, but actually, it's not. If you go to something like change org, change.org, , there are hundreds of things asking for your attention and action to petition against something. And then we asked the other group, you know, independently to look to three boycott calls which is a very much smaller number. So what we found was that the people in the group that saw only three call to action were more willing, 40% more willing to sign a boycott petition. Whereas the ones that were exposed to way too many calls for attention, which is actually what happens in real life, what we're currently experiencing. And we're less likely to do anything about it. And so this drew upon existing literature on choice overload from a consumption perspective.

(19:52):
So previous studies looked at what happens when we give people too many choices in a consumption context. So we were the first to look at, okay, what happens when we give too many choices in an anti-consumption context choice to boycott. And essentially the findings are the same, too much choice leads to inactivity. But what we found that was unique to anti-consumption is that unlike consumption when a person has too many choices, the worst thing that can happen is they don't buy a product. So that sucks for the company or the shareholders or whatever, but it's not really a big deal in the anti-consumption setting. What actually happens is that when a person sees too many calls for boycotting, it triggers this phenomenon called the small agent rationalization, SAR and we measured this and we could see that people that were exposed to 15 boycott calls scored higher on a scale designed to measure small agent rationalization.

(20:43):
And what is that? That is this belief that you don't really have much influence on the world. You're a small agent. So you don't have that efficacy B you feel that the world is inherently an just place. If you expose people to too many calls for boycott action, you actually developing in them a sense of learned helplessness and a sense of, oh, I'm seeing so many different calls for attention. Well, that just must mean that the world is an unjust place. So what's the point? And so that obviously doesn't happen in a consumption setting, but we find that happening in an anti-consumption setting, which means that choice overload and anti-consumption is far more dangerous for both personal wellbeing and also societal wellbeing, because it's actually causing people to feel like they can't do anything.

(21:33):
So how could maybe companies avoid overloading us with boycotting calls?

(21:38):
Yeah. So by companies, I guess what we mean is NGOs or organizations, right? That sort of form these petitions or call for this social action, social justice. What they can do is just like a normal company trying to sell you products. They shouldn't give you too much choice, right? They need to give you enough choice so that you feel like you can, I guess, form a relationship and identify with the product or in this case, the cause, but they shouldn't just blanket except every call for action. Because what that will do is create this small agent rationalization. So they really need to space the timing out, or maybe conglomerate certain calls because now everyone can start a petition for something. Right. When I present the research, I start off with a, there's a petition to stop petitions as well. So that's just kind of a funny thing, but it basically goes to show how many different petitions we're being exposed to on a daily basis. And they all ask us to forward to people. We know. So that's the viral aspect to get that reach out there. But when that happens, everyone just gets overwhelmed.

(22:36):
Oh, man might feel in over your head. Geez

(22:39):
that's right.

(22:40):
So lastly, this show is about empowering people to take action on the climate crisis and we've covered a few different aspects, but what would you tell people who want to consume less in their lives?

(22:51):
I guess one thing is to be content with less, which I think is very much in line with your philosophy as well. So instead of striving for external sort of rewards, you should be developing your internal resources. So your internal capacity to learn a new skill, to become more emotionally intelligent, to be kinder to others, to listen better. So all the stuff that you control as an individual grows you internally rather than striving to acquire more external resources, which is the whole consumption rat race.

(23:28):
Well, it has been very informative, Mike. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

(23:31):
Yeah. Thanks. It's been fantastic, Michael really great to chat and all the best for your tiny house adventure.

(23:37):
Thanks so much. Well, that was my talk with Dr. Lee. I really appreciated his middle-of-the-road approach when it came to anti-consumerism, it wasn't all or nothing, and you can practice anti-consumerism by using less plastic or going to a garage sale. So really, really simple ideas. And I really like that. And don't forget to check out our website, www.inovermyheadpodcast.com. There's other shows I've been on talking about living with less and also pictures of the tiny house. So check it out. Well, that's all for me. I'm Michael Barts. Here's the feeling a little less in over our head when it comes to saving the planet. We'll see you again soon. In over my head was produced and hosted by Michael Bartz original theme song by Gabriel Thaine. If you would like to get in touch with us email info@inovermyheadpodcast.com. Special thanks to Telus STORYHIVE for making this show possible.

(24:29):
I'm trying to save the planet. Will someone please save me?