Consumption Habits
sustainability"[h]abit is the propensity of people to continue to do what they have done in the past without much conscious deliberation" (Dwyer 2009, p.331)
I was reading recently an article about how to build habit-forming products, which discussed various features of habits, and the opportunities for product designers (in this context, application developers) to influence people into developing habits that incorporate their product, so as to make them frequent users. In that context, it is often about building a software user base, but the same ideas also apply to physical products and non-digital services. But what was intriguing in Dwyer's article is that there are multiple types of habit in which we operate; they are not just about daily or weekly routine, or the triggers of certain sights, sounds and smells that lead us to respond in a consistent way.
There are some habits that function at the cultural level, where we conform to some behaviour because, well, that's just what people do, sometimes even when it no longer makes sense and the original reason is lost. You can see it in religious traditions that have carried on for centuries, where the original meaning is long since forgotten (or replaced with a new interpretation according to a usurping religion, as with many of the pagan traditions carried into Christmas and Easter). But on a more mundane level, you can also see it in the shifting standard or 'normal', as a 'decent' standard of living encompasses more and more material goods and expenitures, as luxuries shift to ubiquity. So we have mobile phones (and plans), high-speed broadband and various computing devices as standard household possessions, even one per person, that people feel they cannot live without, even though they were only affordable to the wealthy, if existant at all, some twenty years ago. Several years ago I read of a middle-class person complaining about tough economic times, bemoaning that they could not longer afford an $80 haircut every week. When I tell people I don't own a television, some people look at me as if it's an impossiblility— although in an age of BitTorrent and streaming on demand, this is perhaps more acceptable than it was thirty years ago. And it seems this notion of what's "acceptable" is a very powerful driving force to contend with, even though people are seemingly oblivious of it.
Once again, although various levels of habit are explicitly exploited to market unneccessary products, they do not have a monopoly on ideas, and this area also provides opportunities. Recycling has become habitual for many in recent years; the removal of barriers and the providing of clear prompts (such as the three-bin system) can be utilised by designers to shift people's habits relating to everything from nappies to transit to whether you spend your Sundays at the shopping centre/mall. And if we can shift the cultural norm— the acceptable level of decency— so that it is no longer acceptable to be wasteful (just as was done during the Great Depression and wartimes), well, that would really be something.
This post is a response to:
Rachel Dwyer, 'Making a habit of it: positional consumption, conventional action and the standard of living', Journal of Consumer Culture, 9 (3) (2009), pp. 328-347.