Discussion on the Concept of Over-consumption

Abstract

Over-consumption has become a major problem faced by the world today, including the waste and exhaustion of resources caused by excessive consumption, and obesity caused by excessive consumption of unhealthy food. In recent years, research on over-consumption has shown a growing trend, but few studies have a clear definition of overconsumption. Therefore, this study uses text analysis to retrospectively analyze the literature on over-consumption in the past decade, and further explore over-consumption by analyzing the definition of over-consumption, the object of over-consumption, the form of over-consumption and the measure of over-consumption to further more discuss on the concept of over-consumption. This study establishes a research framework. It believes that over-consumption includes both excessive purchase and excessive consumption, but it cannot simply be summarized and measured by "buy more" or "consume more", but rather exploring from narrow and broad perspectives. In a narrow sense, in terms of individual behavior of consumers, over-consumption refers to the consumption behavior that causes consumers to purchase or consume more products than planned, and produces a psychological reaction of regret or embarrassment. The object is not related to "hedonic products" or "products that are not good for health" or "products of non-renewable resources". Broadly speaking, it is aimed at the public interest of the society and the well-being of mankind, that is, overconsumption is non-essential consumption that has negative consequences which refers to the purchase or use of more "hedonic products", products that are not good for health" and "products of non-renewable resources".

Sustainability. E-book for students

“…The rapid expansion in world population, accompanied by materialistic lifestyles, is boosting the global demand for goods and services and leading humanity to never ending over-consumption. To meet such a huge, ever-increasing demand, the companies develop such goods and services which can be mass produced at very low cost but unfortunately these are generating ecological deficit (Pan, 2019;Tripathi and Singh, 2016). We should also mention here that sustainability is a concept that is difficult to grasp; it is almost impossible to define precisely, so it is a so-called fuzzy concept.…”