Viewing Responsible Consumption as a Personal Project

ABSTRACT Previous research on “responsible consumption” (RC) has focused on the inconsistencies of responsible consumers and has used the term “gap” to refer to these inconsistencies. Observable difficulties, such as a lack of available responsible products and their higher associated costs, have been given as explanations for this gap. A much more complex explanation emerges when RC is seen holistically, a long‐term perspective is adopted, when consumers are studied in their daily life, and consumption is seen as a social activity. The argument developed in this paper draws fundamentally on psychology, in particular on the literature on personal projects. By using an inductive methodology (grounded theory), a case is made for treating responsible consumption as one of many personal projects that an individual may undertake. Since consumers have a project network and projects are not always aligned with one another, there is frequently a clash between projects. This clash can be interpersonal (with other projects of the same individual) or intrapersonal (with the projects, beliefs, norms of his/her significant others). The main contribution of this paper is that it puts forward a holistic, dynamic, and socially embedded view of RC which leads to questioning the notion of “gap.”