Taken collectively, consumer food choices have a major impact on animal lives, human lives, and the environment. But it is far from clear how to move from facts about the power of collective consumer demand to conclusions about what one ought to do as an individual consumer. In particular, even if a large-scale shift in demand away from a certain product (e.g., factory-farmed meat) would prevent grave harms or injustices, it typically does not seem that it will make a difference (...) whether one refrains from purchasing that product oneself. Most present-day food companies operate at too large a scale for a single purchase to make a difference to production decisions. If that is true, then it is not clear what point there is in refraining. This is “the problem of collective impact.” This chapter explores a range of proposals for how to solve this problem. (shrink)

This paper focuses on extant approaches to counteract the consumption of fake news online. Proponents of structural approaches suggest that our proneness to consuming fake news could only be reduced by reshaping the architecture of online environments. Proponents of educational approaches suggest that fake news consumers should be empowered to improve their epistemic agency. In this paper, we address a question that is relevant to this debate: namely, whether fake news consumers commit mistakes for which they can be criticized and (...) that they could easily avoid by reforming their doxastic conduct. Proponents of structural approaches, like R. Rini and B. Millar, have defended in different ways a negative answer to this question. In this paper, we criticize their views and suggest that individual users could improve on their epistemic practice by widening their information diet. (shrink)

Consumer boycotts have become a frequent form of social protest in the digital age. The corporate malpractices motivating them are varied, including environmental pollution, lack of minimum labour standards, severe mistreatment of animals, lobbying and misinformation campaigns, collaboration or complicity with illegitimate political regimes, and systematic tax evasion and tax fraud. In this article, I argue that organised consumer boycotts should be regarded as a legitimate and purposeful instrument for structural change, provided they conform to a number of normative criteria. (...) In order to show this, the practice and empirical context of consumer boycotts are first outlined. I then lay out and refute three general objections to this practice. Although each of these objections fails, their discussion generates insights concerning the normative standards with which boycotters must comply if they want their campaigns to be both legitimate and successful. These normative criteria are detailed along the lines of two guiding principles, proportionality and transparency. In the final step, I elaborate on structural change as the deeper purpose of consumer boycotts. (shrink)

Decision-making regarding healthcare expenditure hinges heavily on an individual's health status and the certainty about the future. This study uses data on propensity of general health exam (GHE) spending to show that despite the debate on the necessity of GHE, its objective is clear—to obtain more information and certainty about one’s health so as to minimise future risks. Most studies on this topic, however, focus only on factors associated with GHE uptake and overlook the shifts in behaviours and attitudes regarding (...) different levels of cost. To fill the gap, this study analyses a dataset of 2068 subjects collected from Hanoi (Vietnam) and its vicinities using the baseline-category logit method. We evaluate the sensitivity of Vietnamese healthcare consumers against two groups of factors (demographic and socioeconomic-cognitive) regarding payment for periodic GHE, which is not covered by insurance. Our study shows that uninsured, married and employed individuals are less sensitive to cost than their counterparts because they value the information in reducing future health uncertainty. The empirical results challenge the objections to periodic health screening by highlighting its utility. The relevance of behavioural economics is further highlighted through a look at the bounded rationality of healthcare consumers and private insurance companies in using and providing the service, respectively. (shrink)

Purpose – This paper furnishes an inaugural reading of abjective consumption by drawing on Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory of abjection within the wider terrain of consumer cultural research. It offers a conceptual framework that rests on three pillars, viz. irrationality, meaninglessness, dissolution of selfhood. Design/methodology/approach – Qualitative research design that adopts a documentary ethnographic approach, by drawing on a corpus of 50 documentary episodes from the TV series “My Strange Addiction” and “Freaky Eaters”. Findings – The findings from this analysis point (...) to different orders of mediatized discourse that are simultaneously operative in different actors’ frames (e.g. moralizing, medical), in Goffman’s terms, yet none of which attains to address the phenomenon of abjective consumption to its fullblown extent. Research limitations/implications – Although some degree of bias is bound to be inherent in the data because of their pre-recorded status, they are particularly useful not in the least because this is a “difficult sample” in qualitative methodological terms. Practical implications – The multi-order dimensionalization of abjective consumption opens up new vistas to marketers in terms of adding novel dimensions to the message structure of their communicative programs, in line with the three Lacanian orders. Social implications – The adoption of a consumer psychoanalytic perspective allows significant others to fully dimensionalize the behavior of abjective consumption subjects, by becoming sensitive to other than symbolic aspects that are endemic in consumer behavior. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the extant consumer cultural research literature by furnishing the novel conceptual framework of abjective consumption, as a further elaboration of my consumer psychoanalytic approach to jouissance consumption, as well as by contrasting this interpretive frame vis-à-vis dominant discursive regimes. (shrink)

Decisional capacity evaluations (DCEs) occur in clinical settings where it is unclear whether a consumer of medical services has the capacity to make an informed decision about the relevant medical options. DCEs are localized interventions, not the global loss of competence, that assign a surrogate decision maker to make the decision on behalf of the medical consumer. We maintain that one important necessary condition for a DCE to be morally justified, in cases of medical necessity, is that the health care (...) consumer under evaluation is incapable of expressing a preference for a certain outcome. (shrink)

In his 2004 article “Hannah Arendt and Jean Baudrillard: Pedagogy in the Consumer Society,” Trevor Norris bemoans the degree to which contemporary education’s focus can increasingly be described as primarily nurturing “consumers in training.” He goes on to add that the consequences of such “mindless” consumerism is that it “erodes democratic life, reduces education to the reproduction of private accumulation, prevents social resistance from expressing itself as anything other than political apathy, and transforms all human relations into commercial transactions of (...) calculated exchange.” This, then, is the challenge of the age: to articulate the sort of education that might prompt our youngsters to imagine a genuine alternative to this consumer madness—a challenge that the authors of this paper attempt to tackle. (shrink)

In the present work, we propose to analyse the category of consumer and how this individual status is being conditioned by European Union (EU) law. After a brief reference to the methodology used, the analysis begins with a consideration about the foundations of consumer protection in EU law and how it developed from an instrument to develop the EU internal market to a relevant one to define the EuroStatus of EU citizens and residents as consumers and players in the market (...) under modern EU law. We will consider consumer protection configuration, the notion of consumer, and the development of a consumer legal framework in the EU, with references to national legislation that can reinforce consumer status. We also consider the European Court of Justice (ECJ) case law, not only regarding its important role in the definition of the notion of a consumer but also in the development of a consumer constitutional procedural for EuroStatus, consolidating the consumer position in the national judicial process. (shrink)

The chapter considers the “paradox of fiction,” understood as the claim that it is in some sense irrational or inappropriate to respond emotionally to mere fictions. Several theorists have held that special features of imagination, or other “arational” mental reflexes, play a role in its resolution. I argue, to the contrary, that imagination need not enter into the solution, and that the paradox can be resolved in a way that shows our responses to fictions to be reasonable and warranted, even (...) if our emotional reactions to fiction are caused by beliefs and desires. Coming to terms with the paradox requires both properly understanding the “rug-pull” structure of the examples used to motivate it, and appreciating the specific emotional norms relevant to fiction appreciation. Related proposals by Livingston & Mele (1997) and Gilmore (2011) are discussed; their relevance to and coherence with the present account are explained. [This is Chapter 11 of Explaining Imagination.]. (shrink)

The main purpose of this study was to determine the significant relationship between the Consumer Attitude and Behavioral Intention of the customers in choosing gasoline stations in Samal District. The study utilized a quantitative descriptive-correlational research design. The data was gathered through the use of survey questionnaires and was distributed personally and randomly to 385 customers of gasoline stations in Samal District. The result showed that the consumer attitude generated a high mean score and shows that the items were oftentimes (...) manifested while behavioral intention also had a high mean score and shows that the items were oftentimes manifested. Moreover, there was a significant relationship between consumer attitude and behavioral intention. It was also found out that consumer attitude significantly influence behavioral intention in the choice of gasoline station. The researchers recommended that a gasoline station should improve their marketing strategy, like giving a discount or promo to their product, improve the quality of service and accommodation because customers oftentimes choose a specific gasoline station according to their attitude and behavioral intention. (shrink)

Mass shootings constitute a recurrent and most violent phenomenon in the U.S. and elsewhere. This paper challenges the ready-made, solipsistically contained metanarratives on offer by mainstream media and formal institutions with regard to the psychological antecedents of the perpetrating social actors, while theorizing mass shootings as acts of violence that are systemically inscribed in the foundations of communities. These foundations abide by the logic of sacrifice which is propagated in instances of collective traumatism. It is argued that the cultural trauma (...) that emanates from events of mass shootings, inasmuch as the commemorative events that are performed on regular occasions, constitute re-enactments of the death drive that sustains communities. The cultural analytic deploys against a CDA reading of longitudinal studies on mass shootings, coupled with psychoanalytic discourse analysis, prior to submitting mass shootings to a deconstructive line of reasoning as systemically necessary transcendental violence. Ultimately, it is shown that the intertextual institutional chain that informs the mediatized representation of this social phenomenon merely attains to obliterate and, hence, to propagate cultural traumatism and the sacrificial logic that underpins it. The terms micrometanarrative, parafunction and expropriating ipseity are introduced and operationalized in this context. (shrink)

We consider a case where consumers are faced with a choice between sweatshop-produced clothing and identical clothing produced in high-income countries. We argue that it is morally better for consumers to purchase clothing produced in sweatshops and then to compensate sweatshop workers for the difference between their actual wage and a fair wage than it is for them either to purchase the sweatshop clothing without this compensatory transfer or to purchase clothing produced in high-income countries.

This paper investigates the link between the consumer perception that a company is socially oriented and the consumer intention to buy products marketed by that company. We suggest that this link exists when at least two conditions prevail: (1) the products sold by that company comply with ethical and social requirements; (2) the company has an acknowledged commitment to protect consumer rights and interests. To test these hypotheses, we conducted a survey among the clients of retail chains offering Fair Trade (...) products. The results show that socially oriented companies can successfully leverage their reputation to market products with high symbolic values. (shrink)

Consumer society, by Jean Baudrillard, is a major contribution to contemporary sociology and philosophy, at the height of the Division of Labor Durkheim or The Protestant Ethic and the Ethics of Capitalism Weber.

The cultural consumption research landscape of the 21st century is marked by an increasing cross-disciplinary fermentation. At the same time, cultural theory and analysis have been marked by successive ‘inter-’ turns, most notably with regard to the Big Four: multimodality (or intermodality), interdiscursivity, transmediality (or intermediality), and intertextuality. This book offers an outline of interdiscursivity as an integrative platform for accommodating these notions. To this end, a call for a return to Foucault is issued via a critical engagement with the (...) so-called practice-turn. This re-turn does not seek to reconstitute venerably Foucauldianism, but to theorize ‘inters-’ as vanishing points that challenge the integrity of discrete cultural orders in non-convergent manners. The propounded interdiscursivity approach is offered as a reading strategy that permeates the contemporary cultural consumption phenomena that are scrutinized in this book, against a pan-consumptivist framework. By drawing on qualitative and mixed methods research designs, facilitated by CAQDAS software, the empirical studies that are hosted here span a vivid array of topics that are directly relevant to both traditional and new media researchers, such as the consumption of ideologies in Web 2.0 social movements, the ability of micro-celebrities to act as cultural game-changers, the post-loyalty abjective consumption ethos. The theoretically novel approaches on offer are coupled with methodological innovations in areas such as user-generated content, artists’ branding, and experiential consumption. (shrink)

The findings reveal that e-commerce serendipity is an artificially facilitated unplanned experience, jointly shaped by consumers and online platforms along with their designers. Being an artificial serendipity, e-commerce serendipity is characterised by its expectedness, thrillingness, and varied outcomes. Three routes were presented for consumers to experience e-commerce serendipity: coincidence, unexpected discovery, encountering. These routes differed via the varying interaction patterns between serendipitists and third parties under different conditions. The findings regarding ecommerce serendipity as a form of artificial serendipity have significant (...) implications for both research and practice. (shrink)

With the highest profile seller of $99 genetic tests under fire, will public trust in personalised medicine suffer?

The concept of food sovereignty is becoming an element of everyday parlance in development politics and food justice advocacy. Yet to successfully achieve food sovereignty, the demands within this movement have to be compatible with the way people are pursuing consumer sovereignty, and vice versa. The aim of this article is to examine the different sets of demands that the two ideals of sovereignty bring about, analyze in how far these different demands can stand in constructive relations with each other (...) and explain why consumers have to adjust their food choices to seasonal production variability to promote food sovereignty and so secure future autonomy. (shrink)

The media consumer, otherwise known as the audience is considered to react actively or passively towards media messages based on existing modern theories. However, the emergent constructs evolved primarily by the advertising media audience in reacting to media messages have deconstructed the pillars that exist as strongholds of modern media audience theories. This study is set to identify and justify the rationale for the evolvement of sociocultural factors among advertising media audience in Nigeria. The study adopts the analytical method in (...) examining outcomes of media adverts in Nigeria. Expectedly, the opportunities created by the post-post modern era are explanatory of the fact that uncelebrated sociocultural factors are paramount in determining the significant level of influence of media adverts over the audience. The study concludes that the consideration of emergent sociocultural factors in addition to modern approaches in advertising will result to more effective media advertising in Nigeria and beyond. (shrink)

This paper addresses the scarcely scrutinized topic in the consumer culture literature regarding how a social actor consumes himself through speech acts. More specifically, by introducing a new type of speech act, viz. the taboo speech act, and by effectively differentiating it from expletives, slang, and swearing words and expressions, I outline how subjectivity appropriates and individuates its systemic underpinning as other or linguistic system (Saussure) and wall of language (Lacan) in linguistic acts of transgression. Taboo speech acts do not (...) merely express emotions, such as anger and frustration. They also seek to contain a linguistic system as an ideational totality of acts of parole in a primus affectivus that is incumbent on the inverse sublimation of epithets and cultural symbols standing synecdochically in a pars pro toto relationship for the limits of what is culturally/linguistically sanctioned. The subject consumes/annihilates and institutes itself at the same time in taboo speech acts whose mission may not be fully accounted for through conversational pragmatics, insofar as they perform at a more foundational level a social ontological function. The offered analysis aims at contributing to the extant literature in consumer cultural theory, applied linguistics, and social theory. (shrink)

This article argues that the contemporary acceptability of abortion is not solely due to the Liberal imperative to exercise individual choice. Rather, abortion's acceptability needs to be explained with reference to the techniques of consumer culture. This article will begin by explaining how practices in general predispose one to gravitate towards one form of practices rather than another. It will then look at how consumer practices generate a biopolitics of economic efficiency and corporeal commodification which culminates in a politics of (...) visibility. Under such conditions, even basic categories like mere existence is dependent on its ability to be displayed for public view. This article will conclude by reflecting on the necessity of forging the Church not as a subsection of a public framed by consumerism, but as an alternative public in its own right. (shrink)

Our current understanding of ‘fake news’ is not in good shape. On the one hand, this category seems to be urgently needed for an adequate understanding of the epistemology in the age of the internet. On the other hand, the term has an unstable ordinary meaning and the prevalent accounts which all relate fake news to epistemically bad attitudes of the producer lack theoretical unity, sufficient extensional adequacy, and epistemic fruitfulness. I will therefore suggest an alternative account of fake news (...) that is meant as an explication rather than a traditional conceptual analysis of the term and that understands fake news solely from the consumer’s perspective. I will argue that this new account has the required theoretical unity, that it is epistemically highly fruitful, and that it is still very close to the ordinary usage. I conclude with addressing some of the main objections to this view. (shrink)

When consumers choose to abstain from purchasing meat, they face some uncertainty about whether their decisions will have an impact on the number of animals raised and killed. Consequentialists have argued that this uncertainty should not dissuade consumers from a vegetarian diet because the “expected” impact, or average impact, will be predictable. Recently, however, critics have argued that the expected marginal impact of a consumer change is likely to be much smaller or more radically unpredictable than previously thought. This objection (...) to the consequentialist case for vegetarianism is known as the “causal inefficacy” (or “causal impotence”) objection. In this paper, we argue that the inefficacy objection fails. First, we summarize the contours of the objection and the standard “expected impact” response to it. Second, we examine and rebut two contemporary attempts (by Mark Budolfson and Ted Warfield) to defeat the expected impact reply through alleged demonstrations of the inefficacy of abstaining from meat consumption. Third, we argue that there are good reasons to believe that single individual consumers—not just individual consumers taken as an aggregate—really do make a positive difference when they choose to abstain from meat consumption. Our case rests on three economic observations: (i) animal producers operate in a highly competitive environment, (ii) complex supply chains efficiently communicate some information about product demand, and (iii) consumers of plant-based meat alternatives have positive consumption spillover effects on other consumers. (shrink)

This study analyzed consumers' preferences for local textiles, specifically Tie-dye and Batik, in the Itoku Local Government Area of Ogun State, Nigeria. Itoku markets were purposefully selected due to their high sales of Adire and Batik. One hundred and fifty respondents were randomly selected from two markets in Itoku. Data was collected through a structured questionnaire and analyzed using descriptive statistics such as means. T-test was used to analyze differences in preference between tie-dye and batik. The results (t = -7.97, (...) P = 0.003) showed a significant difference in consumers' attitudes towards tie-dye and batik. It was also found that the factors influencing consumers' preferences significantly affected both Adire and Batik (t = -4.11, P = 0.001). Further analysis revealed that there was no significant difference in the factors responsible for consumers' preferences between tie-dye and batik (t = 0.008, P = 0.940). Thus, a good number of the respondents preferred tie-dye to batik, just as there were a good number of them who also preferred batik to tie-dye, regardless of factors such as aesthetic values, design patterns, color combinations, durability, attractiveness, production cost, and selling prices. (shrink)

Baudrillard was deeply influenced by this new ‘science’ of Semiology, which sought to study the system of language and the ‘life of signs within society’. In semiotics, a sign can be interpreted subjectively, the meaning being something beyond or other than itself. This sign is therefore able to communicate information to the person reading or decoding the sign. Baudrillard builds on the Saussurian dyadic, two-part model of the sign, where the sign is seen as being composed of a signifier (signifiant)- (...) the form that the sign takes, and the signified (signifié)- the concept it represents. Baudrillard’s work on the political economy of the sign attempts to marry semiological and neo-Marxist perspectives, providing an important insight into the power of production and the behavior of consumers. (shrink)

One popular defence of moral omnivorism appeals to facts about the indirectness of the diner’s causal relationship to the suffering of farmed animals. Another appeals to the claim that farmed animals would not exist but for our farming practices. The import of these claims, I argue, has been misunderstood, and the standard arguments grounded in them fail. In this paper, I develop a better argument in defence of eating meat which combines resources from both of these strategies, together with principles (...) of population ethics, and discuss its implications for which sorts of meat it is permissible to eat. According to the diner’s defence, there is an asymmetry between producers and consumers of meat. Producers can prevent the suffering of animals without preventing their existence, but consumers cannot. This asymmetry grounds a defence against harm-based objections to eating meat which is available to the consumer alone, and which avoids the controversial commitments about moral status or the interests of nonhuman animals endemic to existing attempts to justify omnivorism. (shrink)

Promotion of prescription drugs may appear to be severely limited in some jurisdictions due to restrictions on direct-to-consumer advertising. However, in most jurisdictions, strategies exist to raise consumer awareness about prescription drugs, notably through the deployment of direct-to-consumer information campaigns that encourage patients to seek help for particular medical conditions. In Canada, DTCI is presented by industry and regulated by Health Canada as being purely informational activities, but their design and integration in broader promotional campaigns raise very similar ethical concerns (...) as those associated with DTCA. Specifically, DTCI can be an effective means of familiarizing the public with the scope and benefits of a particular prescription drug and so, like DTCA, can promote increased patient-consumer demand and thus a problematic rise in the prescribing and use of medications that may be neither the most appropriate nor the most cost-effective. Yet, with DTCI the industry is playing within the existing rules and regulations set by health regulators. To respond appropriately to this regulatory incoherence, we argue that DTCI should be regulated as a type of direct-to-consumer indirect advertising. Even if the case and specific regulations presented here are Canadian, the implications extend to every country that has a partial or total prohibition on DTCA. (shrink)

While environmental claims are increasingly used by companies to appeal consumers, they also attract greater scrutiny from independent parties interested in consumer protection. Consumers are now able to compare corporate environmental claims against external, often disconfirming, information to form their brand attitudes and purchase intentions. What remains unclear is how the level of information specificity of both the environmental claims and external disconfirming information interact to influence consumer reactions. Two experiments address this gap in the CSR communication literature. When specific (...) claims are countered by specific external information, consumers report more negative brand attitudes and lower purchase intentions. The effect is serially mediated by skepticism toward the claims and lack of corporate credibility. We conclude by discussing strategies that firms can utilize to avoid information dilution and ensure that external disconfirming information percolates to consumers as specific. (shrink)

The objective of this research is to empirically test a research model on the effect of consumer economic nationalism on consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral responses to the marketing of locally produced foods. Data was collected from a sample of Ghanaians through an online survey using a structured questionnaire. Using structural equation modelling to analyse the data, the study revealed that cognitive and affective involvement influences product familiarity. Also, product familiarity and economic nationalism influence consumers ‘overall attitude towards locally produced foods. (...) Finally, the overall attitude towards the product and economic nationalism both influence consumer buying intention of locally produced foods. This study was limited to the Ghanaian geographical context, thus, for a broader assessment of the robustness of the research model, future studies should undertake a cross-national comparison. The findings provide practitioners with the strategies for influencing consumer attitudes and intentions towards locally produced foods. For policymakers, the findings provide input on strategies for altering consumers’ attitudes and intentions to patronize locally produced foods. Considering the paucity of research in understanding the role of economic nationalism in influencing consumer attitude and intention towards locally produced foods, this study makes a compelling contribution to the literature by incorporating the economic nationalism theory into the theory of planned behavior. (shrink)

The paper explores the influence of greenwash on green trust and discusses the mediation roles of green consumer confusion and green perceived risk. The research object of this study focuses on Taiwanese consumers who have the purchase experience of information and electronics products in Taiwan. This research employs an empirical study by means of the structural equation modeling. The results show that greenwash is negatively related to green trust. Therefore, this study suggests that companies must reduce their greenwash behaviors to (...) enhance their consumers’ green trust. In addition, this study finds out that green consumer confusion and green perceived risk mediate the negative relationship between greenwash and green trust. The results also demonstrate that greenwash is positively associated with green consumer confusion and green perceived risk which would negatively affect green trust. It means that greenwash does not only negatively affect green trust directly but also negatively influence it via green consumer confusion and green perceived risk indirectly. Hence, if companies would like to reduce the negative relationship between greenwash and green trust, they need to decrease their consumers’ green consumer confusion and green perceived risk. (shrink)

In hyper-modern society, food has become a source of endemic discontent. Many food products are seen as ‘tainted’; literally, figuratively or both. A psychoanalytic approach, I will argue, may help us to come to terms with our alimentary predicaments. What I envision is a ‘depth ethics’ focusing on some of the latent tensions, conflicts and ambiguities at work in the current food debate. First, I will outline some promising leads provided by two prominent psychoanalytic authors, namely Sigmund Freud and Jacques (...) Lacan. Subsequently, I will elucidate why our chronic dependency on high-tech food production apparently fails to meet consumer needs, focusing on some scenarios of escape, such as anorexia, cultured meat and ersatz food. And I will use ‘genres of the imagination’ to flesh out how food consumption has become a podium for enacting cultural symptoms, moral outcries, provocative identities and practices of the Self. Notably, I will discuss a story by Franz Kafka, a painting by Pablo Picasso and a food novel by Margaret Atwood. (shrink)

Health service consumers' satisfaction with the services they receive has been a challenge over the past decade, and this has been attributed to many factors that diverse scholars have investigated using different variables. In this study, the attitude and ethical behaviours of healthcare providers as antidotes to health service consumers' satisfaction in the Primary Health Centre at Mgbuoshimini, Port Harcourt, Nigeria, were investigated. A cross-sectional descriptive research design was used to select participants from pregnant women, nursing mothers, couples for family (...) planning, and sick patients. The data were analysed using descriptive statistical tools. The results of the grand total response values were 400 (100%) and strongly agree had 190 (47.5%), agree had 160 (40%), 390 (100%) and strongly agree had 260 (66.7%), agree had 100 (25.6%), and strongly disagree had 13 (3.3%). The overall results were strongly agreed (66.7%) and agreed (25.6%); these connote that the attitudes and ethical behaviours of the healthcare providers towards healthcare service consumers in the primary healthcare facility were poor and that healthcare providers do not execute good ethical behaviour towards health service consumers in the facility, leading to low levels of health resource consumption, low patronage image promotion, and consumers' loss of confidence in the service provider. Therefore, the government should put mechanisms in place to ensure a positive attitude and favourable ethical behaviour among healthcare providers, and individual healthcare providers should also acquire soft skills to improve their attitude and ethical behaviour. (shrink)

Three things must be clarified before we can proceed with the examination. These are the terms sustainability, politics and megatrend. Unfortunately, all three are ambiguous and few disciplines have arrived at a consistent definition for any of them. While we will not resolve the ambiguity to everyone's satisfaction, we will attempt to achieve an extensional bargain (Rappaport, 1953) through which we develop an understanding of how we are using the terms. First, sustainable development became a construct in 1987 through the (...) Brundtland Report (Brundtland, 1987) and has remained ambiguous ever since. This is where we begin our examination of sustainable consumption. Megatrend, as a phenomenon, has been defined in a multitude of ways over the past thirty-five years. In this chapter, we adopt the criteria set forth by Mittelstaedt et al. (2014) for categorising megatrends, but will use a broader interpretation of what constitutes megatrends. Finally, our use of the term political will be broader than the more common use of the term relating to legal structures, laws or agencies, and include the underlying institutions that frame the more micro aspects of politics. This approach is necessary because of the scale of sustainability and megatrends in both time and space. (shrink)

This paper is an attempt to understand how social knowledge affects human economic decision making. The paper discusses the nature of social knowledge in today’s context with special reference to how social knowledge influences consumers’ sentiments and their economic decisions. Social networks are being continuously flooded with various kinds of information and disinformation. Some of the information becomes knowledge for social network users who browse various kinds of content that are either entertaining or related to products and marketing. Although reliability (...) remains a critical issue regarding online information from social networks, it, however, provides some knowledge about diverse things, goods, and products being in use in different societies around the world. Some products advertised on social networks like Facebook may affect consumer decisions or provide information about new products. This paper presents a formal discussion on what social knowledge is and how it is originated, and what use it might have for such consumers. The paper designs a simplistic mathematical model for a theoretical understanding of the assumption that has practical implications regarding its utility in society. It is found that social networks generate enough social information that can influence user choice and preferences. The study has implications for both the users and the developers of social networking sites. (shrink)

Baudrillard was deeply influenced by this new ‘science’ of Semiology, which sought to study the system of language and the ‘life of signs within society’. In semiotics, a sign can be interpreted subjectively, the meaning being something beyond or other than itself. This sign is therefore able to communicate information to the person reading or decoding the sign. Baudrillard builds on the Saussurian dyadic, two-part model of the sign, where the sign is seen as being composed of a signifier (signifiant)- (...) the form that the sign takes, and the signified (signifié)- the concept it represents. Baudrillard’s work on the political economy of the sign attempts to marry semiological and neo-Marxist perspectives, providing an important insight into the power of production and the behavior of consumers. (shrink)

In Vayena’s article, ‘direct-to-consumer (DTC) genomics on the scales of autonomy’, she claims that there may be a strong autonomy-based argument for permitting DTC genomic services. In this response, I point out how the diminishment of one’s genetic privacy can cause a relevant autonomy-related harm which must be balanced against the autonomy-related gains DTC services provide. By drawing on conceptual connections between privacy and the Razian conception of autonomy, I show that DTC genetic testing may decrease the range of valuable (...) options individuals possess, which impacts the extent to which would-be consumers can exercise their autonomy. (shrink)

It is the focus of this paper to tackle the topic of how consumers affect their surrounding environment and, more specifically, how they can affect animal welfare. Through comparisons with the Darwinist survivalist consumption habits and Maslow´s hierarchy, our modern society´s needs and habits are evaluated. Finally a Utilitarian approach, with the goal of the rise of the conscious consumer, is suggested for our so-called advanced societies.

In a rigorous systematic review, Dukhanin and colleagues categorize metrics and evaluative tools of the engagement of patient, public, consumer, and community in decision-making in healthcare institutions and systems. The review itself is ably done and the categorizations lead to a useful understanding of the necessary elements of engagement, and a suite of measures relevant to implementing engagement in systems. Nevertheless, the question remains whether the engagement of patient representatives in institutional or systemic deliberations will lead to improved clinical outcomes (...) or increased engagement of individual patients themselves in care. Attention to the conceptual foundations of patient engagement would help make this systematic review relevant to the clinical care of patients. (shrink)

Many approaches to addressing labour injustices—shortfalls from minimally decent wages and working conditions— focus on how governments should orient themselves toward other states in which such phenomena take place, or to the firms that are involved with such practices. But of course the question of how to regard such labour practices must also be faced by individuals, and individual consumers of the goods that are produced through these practices in particular. Consumers have become increasingly aware of their connections to complex (...) global production processes that often involve such injustice. For example, activist campaigns have exposed wrongful harm in factories producing clothes, shoes and mobile phones and farms producing coffee, tea and cocoa. These campaigns have promoted the message to ordinary people that by becoming connected to unjust labour practices through their purchasing behaviour, they acquire special additional moral responsibilities to contribute to reforming such practices, or to address the hardships suffered by the victims of the wrongdoing that result from them. The moral significance of the responsibilities of individual consumers has not, however, received much analytical scrutiny. Why should we believe that there are such responsibilities? And if there are such responsibilities, what are their grounds? How stringent are the responsibilities triggered by such connections? Finally, what are the implications of such responsibilities—the courses of action that they prescribe or proscribe? The activists who assert special ethical responsibilities for consumers have promoted many particular courses of action, but have seldom articulated the grounds of these responsibilities or explained why they should be taken to be stringent. And moral and political theorists have not devoted much focussed attention to this issue. For the consumer who is concerned to act in a morally permissible way, this presents a troubling practical challenge regarding the goods they may (or may not) purchase, and the moral relevance of their consumption choices more generally. While we cannot address all of these pressing questions in this chapter, we try to make some headway with them by discussing two general approaches to the question of how individuals should conceive of their responsibilities with respect to such practices, taking as our starting point the recent work of the late Iris Marion Young—the most sustained treatment of this topic by a prominent political theorist. In a series of influential articles and a posthumously published book, Young articulated an approach to conceiving of individual responsibilities to address labour injustices—the social connection model—at home and abroad. She also argued that an alternative model—the liability model—which she claimed had dominated discourse on this topic, suffered from very serious flaws. In a critical vein, we will argue that Young’s arguments against the liability model are not convincing, and that the alternative she proposes is itself vulnerable to some damaging objections. We also find, however, that the liability model would need to be extended in various ways to provide an adequate account of individual responsibility to address shortfalls from minimally decent wages and working conditions, and we begin the task of sketching an extended framework. (shrink)

Online identification is a common problem but so far resolved unsatisfactorily, as consumers cannot fully control how much data they share and with whom. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) technology promises to help by making use of decentralized data repositories as well as advanced cryptographic algorithms and protocols. This paper examines the effects of SSIs on responsible, confident, and vulnerable consumers in order to develop the missing understanding of consumer needs in SSI adoption and define preconditions and necessary considerations for the development (...) of SSI-based platforms and applications. (shrink)

The goal of this article is to present a first list of ethical concerns that may arise from research and personal use of virtual reality (VR) and related technology, and to offer concrete recommendations for minimizing those risks. Many of the recommendations call for focused research initiatives. In the first part of the article, we discuss the relevant evidence from psychology that motivates our concerns. In Section “Plasticity in the Human Mind,” we cover some of the main results suggesting that (...) one’s environment can influence one’s psychological states, as well as recent work on inducing illusions of embodiment. Then, in Section “Illusions of Embodiment and Their Lasting Effect,” we go on to discuss recent evidence indicating that immersion in VR can have psychological effects that last after leaving the virtual environment. In the second part of the article, we turn to the risks and recommendations. We begin, in Section “The Research Ethics of VR,” with the research ethics of VR, covering six main topics: the limits of experimental environments, informed consent, clinical risks, dual-use, online research, and a general point about the limitations of a code of conduct for research. Then, in Section “Risks for Individuals and Society,” we turn to the risks of VR for the general public, covering four main topics: long-term immersion, neglect of the social and physical environment, risky content, and privacy. We offer concrete recommendations for each of these 10 topics, summarized in Table 1. (shrink)

We are likely to have immersive virtual reality and ubiquitous augmented reality in the coming decades. At least some people will use extended reality or “the metaverse” to work, play and shop. In order to achieve the best possible versions of this virtual future, however, we will need to learn from three decades of regulating the Internet. The new virtual world cannot consist of walled corporate fiefdoms ruled only by profitmaximization. The interests of workers, consumers and citizens in virtuality require (...) proactive legislation and oversight. -/- This white paper first addresses the central question the metaverse poses, whether virtual life is inherently more alienating and less authentic than face-to-face life experiences. This question is both a philosophical question about the nature of the good life and an empirical question about the accumulating evidence about the impacts of the digital on subjective well-being. -/- . (shrink)

I argue that a comprehensive ontological assessment of the beatific vision suggests that an individual’s experience of God’s face is not merely dependent on a revelation of the divine energies, but that it requires a particular mode of reception on the part of the blessed individual grounded in the reality of their faith; lacking faith, what would otherwise be experienced as the blessed vision of God is instead received as a torturous punishment. Therefore, I contend that the beatific vision is (...) one of two possible phenomena resultant from seeing God’s face; the other is more commonly labeled “hellfire.” Consequently, the often-assumed bifurcated landscape of the Afterlife (into a Heaven suffused with God’s presence and a Hell deprived of it) must be reassessed. (shrink)

A consumer health information system must be able to comprehend both expert and non-expert medical vocabulary and to map between the two. We describe an ongoing project to create a new lexical database called Medical WordNet (MWN), consisting of medically relevant terms used by and intelligible to non-expert subjects and supplemented by a corpus of natural-language sentences that is designed to provide medically validated contexts for MWN terms. The corpus derives primarily from online health information sources targeted to consumers, and (...) involves two sub-corpora, called Medical FactNet (MFN) and Medical BeliefNet (MBN), respectively. The former consists of statements accredited as true on the basis of a rigorous process of validation, the latter of statements which non-experts believe to be true. We summarize the MWN / MFN / MBN project, and describe some of its applications. (shrink)

En el viatge a la recerca de la felicitat, Occident ha mirat moltes vegades Orient. Una cultura llunyana i desconeguda on sembla que alguns troben les respostes als dubtes que el seu món els planteja. Neix així un mercat de valors no borsari on es venen idees i formes d'entendre el món. Un joc molt lucratiu, però molt poc transformador.

As a moral foundation for vegetarianism and other consumer choices, act consequentialism can be appealing. When we justify our consumer and dietary choices this way, however, we face the problem that our individual actions rarely actually precipitate more just agricultural and economic practices. This threshold or individual impotence problem engaged by consequentialist vegetarians and their critics extends to morally motivated consumer decision-making more generally, anywhere a lag persists between individual moral actions taken and systemic moral progress made. Regan and others (...) press just this point against Singer's utilitarian basis for vegetarianism; recently Chartier criticizes act-consequentialist vegetarianism by identifying many factors weakening the connection between individual meat purchases and changes in animal production. While such factors are relevant to act-consequentialist moral reasoning, I argue, they need not defeat the act-consequentialist case for vegetarianism and consumer ethics. This is shown by offering a probabilistic account of the threshold issue and discussing the positive and negative role-modelling effects of our morally motivated dietary and consumer choices. (shrink)

In 2012, a major traffic safety organization tasked the MIT AgeLab with developing a data-driven system for rating the effectiveness of new technologies intended to improve safety. Such a system was envisioned as having the potential to educate and guide consumers towards more confident and strategic purchasing decisions, ideally encouraging adoption of technologies with demonstrated safety benefit. In addition, an evaluation of the status and extent of existing data was seen as a way of identifying research gaps in the state (...) of knowledge about safety systems. The focus was on technologies as a class, not on a rating review of individual vehicle model implementations. As conceptualized, the system aimed to complement traditional NCAP style ratings as well as to provide consumers with transparent information on early stage and often improving safety technologies. Development of the rating system and identification of data was undertaken in consultation with a range of academic, industrial, consumer, NGO, and governmental experts as well as with representatives of many of the major automotive manufacturers and suppliers. -/- A key observation that emerged was that data on objectively demonstrable real-world benefits were generally sparse and often lower than expectations based on theoretical considerations, simulation studies, or pre-production evaluations. A number of experts and industry representatives expressed some surprise at both the divergence between theoretical and observed benefits and the relative scarcity of data upon which to make objective assessments, while others were quite aware of these issues and the need for the development of objective data under real-world operating conditions. A number of factors that might be relevant to understanding why such differences between expected and observed benefits exist were identified. One outcome of this effort was the founding of the Advanced Vehicle Technology (AVT) consortium to collect and examine objective data under naturalistic driving conditions of how drivers interact with, engage or don’t engage, various production safety and driver assistance systems. This ongoing effort is contributing to insights concerning actual benefits and reasons for benefit gaps. -/- Drawing from our initial work, as well as newer sources of data, we argue that the evaluation and rating of safety and driver assistance technologies for informing the consumer and the public at large should consider both theoretical potential and existing demonstrated benefit of specific technologies. This position is increasingly relevant as the effectiveness of many newer technologies have the potential to actually improve over the lifecycle of a vehicle through software updates. The emphasis on ratings based on observed benefit for actual drivers under real-world conditions is proposed to be complementary, rather than competing with, ratings focused largely on controlled test track evaluations of engineered capability. In addition, a case is made for providing ratings that assesses benefit relative to overall crash, injury, and fatality rates – and in relation to the specific scenario / crash event type that a given technology is intended to address. This approach should aid consumers in considering the extent to which a specific technology is or is not relevant to their particular driving needs. (shrink)