Dimensions of cosmopolitanism and their influence on political consumption: an analysis focused onSpanish consumers

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to confirm the hypothesis that political consumption – a form of consumerism whose importance has increased during the past few years – can be considered a form of critical action, and that cosmopolitanism contributes to its development. The main objective was, first, to analyse an unexplored dimension of political consumption and, second, to obtain a measurement proposal for what some authors have called ordinary cosmopolitanism. The study, based on a survey, was divided into three sections. The first section offers a theoretical introduction to the study proposal. The second describes the hypothesis and the data analysis strategy, and proposes an operationalization of cosmopolitanism in three dimensions – symbolic cosmopolitanism, experiential cosmopolitanism and moral cosmopolitanism – which have been obtained by means of the application of categorical principal components analysis. By applying one‐way analysis of variance and Tukey's test, the third section shows the existence of significantly higher scores in these three dimensions for those individuals who have bought or boycotted products for ethical, political or environmental reasons. Finally, an ordinary least squares regression analysis was performed to test the association between cosmopolitanism and political consumerism, controlling the effect of the main socio‐demographic variables. The study confirms the initial hypothesis; therefore, political consumption could be considered a type of consumerism that is clearly related to cosmopolitanism.

The pro‐environmental consumer discourse: A political perspective on organic food consumption

“…Regarding nationality, one third of the participants are foreign citizens, from different nationalities, who have settled in Portugal, which reveals the cosmopolitan character of the participants (Llopis‐Goig, 2013).…”

“…Political consumption can take on two conscious and deliberate forms, based on personal and moral beliefs: boycotts, through negative consumerism; and support buying, through positive consumerism (Llopis‐Goig, 2013). Niva and Jallinoja's (2018) consider that food is in the domain of political consumption.…”

Reducing carbon emissions through employee participation: evidence from Australia

“…() developed categorical principal components (CATPCA) specifically for ordinal and nominal multivariate data, incorporating a non‐linear optimal scaling transformation of the variables. CATPCA has been used in a wide variety of research applications including employment relations (Portillo et al ., ), finance (Serrano‐Cinca and Gutierrez‐Nieto, ), sociology (Llopis‐Goig, ), biology (Waylen et al ., ) and environmental studies (Sindik and Šarac, ).…”

Varieties of Political Consumerism

“…That is, consuming particular products or 'styles' provides both a critical source for defining the self and a means for conveying the own self in public (cf. Dittmar 2008;Llopis-Goig 2013;Ozcalgar-Toulouse 2007;Sommer 2007, 26ff. ; see also Ariely and Norton 2009;Belk 1988;Bennett 2003;Jubas 2007;Stolle and Micheletti 2013, 19-20).…”