With sustainability being one of the most common issues facing consumers and society today, this paper explores the status of sustainable consumption in Korea and Japan—societies expected to drive the changes pertaining to sustainable consumption in Asia. Although Korea and Japan have been implementing sustainability-related policies, there is still room for development of sustainability in terms of consumers’ participation. As sustainable consumption is defined as consumers’ environmental decision-making process, which requires cognitive efforts, it is necessary to understand individual’s sustainable consumption based on the conceptual model of behavior, in order to encourage the adoption of more sustainable consumer practices. Being grounded in the revised Theory of Reasoned Action, which adds consumers’ awareness, pro-environmental self-identity, and descriptive norm, this study contributes to a better empirical understanding of the factors that underlie sustainable consumption behaviors with respect to social-cognitive viewpoint. By involving a survey of Korean and Japanese respondents’ awareness, descriptive norm, practical behavior to 47 specific activities, as well as attitude and pro-environmental self-identity, the study works on two levels: on one level, it is a study of sustainability-related consumer activities and behaviors in Korea and Japan; on another level, it identifies key variables to explain sustainable consumption behavior through hierarchical regression analysis. The results show that among the numerous sectors requiring prioritized expansion of sustainable consumption, the area of consumer citizenship has received relatively little publicity. Another important finding is that the failure to practically engage in sustainability-related activities by consumers cannot simply be attributed to knowledge deficit, as consumers in both countries appropriately recognize sustainable consumption. Our results clearly illustrate that consumers perform sustainable consumption behavior based mostly on socially shared connotations—the descriptive norm—while the other key variables affecting sustainable consumption are awareness, and pro-environmental self-identity. However, we also observed that there is no significant effect on attitude, indicating that even a favorable attitude toward performing sustainability-related activities does not directly translate into actual behavior. This paper shows how consumer perceptions of the normality of environmentally friendly behaviors can be used for the design of strategies to promote sustainable consumption in Korean and Japanese societies. In addition, we provide practical guidelines for the expansion of sustainable consumption tailored for the characteristics of each society.

We argue that the social mobility of the Japanese middle classes is becoming closer to that of their Korean counterparts thanks to their increasing exposure to globalization. Globalization upsets the balance between transaction costs and opportunity costs of Japanese economic institutions such as Japanese management practices and the long‐term relationship between the principal contractor and its subcontractors (the shitauke relationship). As a result, it makes social mobility of the new and old middle classes, which have been protected by such institutions, more fluid. Thus we make this argument based on the assumption that the Korean middle classes have already been exposed to globalization and thus are more mobile than their Japanese counterparts. Then we test its empirical validity by analyzing absolute and relative mobility of the middle classes in the two societies with national representative data sets assembled in Japan in 1975, 1985 and 1995 and in Korea in 1990. The results of the analysis show: (1) that the Korean middle classes are more fluid than their Japanese counterparts; and (2) that globalization has affected the social mobility of the old middle class much more than that of the new middle class in Japan. The second finding implies that Japanese management customs that have protected a certain portion of the new middle class are less affected by globalization than the institutions that have protected the old middle class. In other words, the practices have a stronger inertia of institution.

The middle class in the Republic of Korea grew quickly in the course of the country's rapid economic growth. This paper analyzes the characteristics of Korea's new and old middle classes by examining the socioeconomic conditions, experience of mobility, and social consciousness of the people in these classes. Analysis shows that many people presently in these well-off classes have experienced intra-and intergenerational mobility. While the old middle class is greatly open to both inter-and intragenerational inflow, the new middle class is close to intragenerational inflow. The probability of reaching the new middle class is greatly affected by one's level of education; however, education level largely depends on one's class origin. It is also shown that the Korean new middle class has a comparatively progressive social consciousness. However, people's political attitudes are determined not by one's position in the class structure but by nonclass factors, such as one's age, education level, and native region. I. INTRODUCTIONN 1987 the movement for democracy in the Republic of Korea grew stronger leading to the June 29th "Declaration for Democracy" which marked the end of the authoritarian regime and opened the way for the country's transition to democracy. Researchers in and outside of Korea have been very interested in studying the social factors that brought about this political change, and have focused on the social consciousness and political role of the Korean middle class which expanded rapidly in the course of Korea's strong economic growth.There has been an ongoing practical interest among Korean scholars in studying the movement for further social change, and from this underlying interest there arose during the late 1980s and early 1990s a lively debate among scholars and social activists in Korea over the political orientation of the country's middle class. 1 While most researchers outside of Korea focused on the leadership role of the middle class in Korea's political change, within Korea's internal debate the working class was assumed as the prime mover for social change. The point at issue was whether or not the middle class would come together join with the working class to I 01 Regarding the development of studies on the Korean middle class, see for example Hong (1992) and Cho (1996). THE DEVELOPING ECONOMIES 202 become part of the movement for social change. While some scholars stressed the conservatism of the middle class, others emphasized its progressiveness and the possibility of its solidarity with the working class. 2 With the start of this debate many empirical studies were done in Korea on the country's middle class, but the central issue of these studies was whether or not the middle class was politically conservative or progressive which was largely a continuation of the debate (Cho 1996, p. 269). Such preoccupation led to the neglect of many important issues concerning the middle class in Korea. Some of these will be presented below, and will be analyzed in the remainder of thi...

No abstract

No abstract