How personality traits shape our tendency to engage in political consumerism

Many people choose to consciously purchase or boycott products for political and ethical reasons. Indeed, as Kathrin Ackermann and Birte Gundelach explain, political consumerism now ranks as one of the most frequently used forms of political participation in western democracies. Drawing on new evidence from Switzerland, they examine the role of personality traits in shaping ... Continue

In Diversity We Trust: The Positive Effect of Ethnic Diversity on Outgroup Trust

Most studies on ethnic diversity and social trust rely on the standard measure of generalized trust. This study complements existing work on this topic by examining the effect of diversity on trust toward outgroups. This innovation is motivated by two closely connected arguments: At first, most existent studies are conducted in the framework of intergroup contact and conflict theory. These theories directly allude to trust toward outgroups. Second, recent empirical studies show that the standard measure of generalized trust is much less generalized than theoretically assumed. Instead it is blurred by a great deal of particularized trust. Explicit outgroup trust therefore seems to be better suited to empirically testing the extent to which growing ethnic diversity influences trust toward people different from oneself. The cross-national analysis yields a positive relationship between diversity and outgroup trust, which is an interesting finding given the current debate dominated by conflict theoretical reasoning

Soziales Vertrauen in ethnisch heterogenen Nachbarschaften: eine kritische Evaluation empirischer Ergebnisse

Vor dem Hintergrund stetig wachsender Immigration in westliche Industrienationen wird seit nunmehr zehn Jahren eine kontroverse sozialwissenschaftliche Debatte über den Einfluss ethnisch-kultureller Diversität auf das soziale Zusammenleben in Einwanderungsgesellschaften geführt. Insbesondere die Forschungen von Robert Putnam, die einen negativen Einfluss wachsender kultureller Diversität auf das soziale Miteinander suggerieren, haben eine Flut empirischer Analysen nach sich gezogen. Die in den letzten Jahren enorm angestiegene Zahl der Asylsuchenden in Europa sowie die zunehmenden negativen Reaktionen auf diese Entwicklung unterstreichen die anhaltende Aktualität und Relevanz dieser Debatte. Die bisher vorliegenden empirischen Analysen und Literaturübersichten zeichnen ein vielschichtiges Bild empirischer Resultate, welches klare Schlussfolgerungen für die Wirkung immigrationsinduzierter Diversität auf das soziale Zusammenleben schwierig erscheinen lässt. Dieser Beitrag zielt darauf ab, den kontroversen Forschungsstand zu ordnen und zusammenzufassen sowie kritisch zu analysieren. Soziales Vertrauen steht dabei als wichtiges Element sozialen Zusammenhalts sowie als Fundament für das allgemeine Gefühl subjektiver Sicherheit in der urbanen Nachbarschaft im Mittelpunkt der Analyse

Political consumerism: a comparative analysis of established and developing democracies

Research on political consumerism has focused predominantly on highly developed democracies. This focus has led to theoretical explanations closely connected to the social and political transformations of advanced industrialized democracies. In times of globalization and individualization, political consumerism is assumed to originate in political distrust stemming from perceived governance gaps. Recently, political consumerism has become a more frequent form of political participation in the Global South and a research topic attracting increased attention. The inclusion of the Global South requires a re-evaluation of political distrust as a general stimulus for political consumerism because of its conceptual links to socio-economic contexts in the Global North. This article provides such a re-evaluation and thereby advances the comparative analysis of political distrust as an important impetus of political consumerism in established as well as developing democracies

Political consumerism as a form of political participation: challenges and potentials of empirical measurement

Political consumerism features prominently as an increasing form of non-institutionalized and individualized political participation. The main challenge of empirical participation research is to integrate emerging alternative forms such as political consumerism into standard measurement instruments of participation. So far, serious deficits of existing survey instruments prevent political scientists to adequately assess the role of political consumerism within the repertoire of political participation. Originally apolitical activities such as conscious purchasing behaviour are all too easily interpreted as political participation, which undermines the political science concept of political participation. The aim of this article therefore is the presentation of an empirical research strategy to analyse political consumerism as an emerging form of political participation. I use a purposively designed online survey with more than 3500 randomly selected participants to analyse and reconcile current deficits of the empirical measurement of political consumerism as emerging form of political participation. Based on the empirical insights gained by our survey, I propose an innovative measurement instrument for political consumerism to be used in international comparative survey research

Politischer Konsum in der Schweiz

The aim of the research project is to assess, understand and explain an emerging form of alternative political participation in Switzerland, known as political consumerism. Political consumerism means the active consumer choice of producers, products and services based on ethical considerations. Acknowledging and benefiting from a huge and impressive interdisciplinary body of research on multiple aspects of political consumerism our project is aimed to refine and advance political consumerism research from an explicit perspective of political science. Some political scientists argue that political consumerism is a significant form of political participation as activists aim to bring about social and political change through purchasing behaviour. While traditional forms of political participation, such as voting, campaigning and party work or contacting representatives seem to be on the decline, sparse empirical data suggest that political consumerism is a steadily increasing form of activism in Switzerland and other Western industrialized countries. This observation is particularly relevant against the background of recent heated debates on declining political participation in established democracies. At least in the case of political consumerism - one of the most frequent forms of unconventional political participation - this observation however rests on cursory and most probably highly inflated empirical measurements that do not adequately capture the political intention of consumers. Besides superficial single-item questions included in few international surveys, there is to date no solid quantitative empirical data on political consumerism available neither for Switzerland nor for international comparative empirical analyses. Our aim to explore political consumerism as a new and important form of political participation in Switzerland requires three interrelated research steps: First, based on abundant interdisciplinary research on different forms of political consumerism, we plan to purposely develop an elaborated survey instrument that reconciles deficits of current quantitative measurement instruments for political consumerism. In particular, the survey must account for political motives in shopping behaviour, frequency and breadth of behaviour and must collect data on the whole repertoire of political consumerism. Second, we will use this new instrument to assess political consumerism in Switzerland. This survey will entail two different samples. On the one hand, a nationwide representative sample of respondents will be surveyed in order to gain a general representative image of political consumerism in Switzerland. On the other hand, a small, purposive sample of vegans will be surveyed as an example of a group in which political consumerism is probably extremely pronounced. The third and main step is to assess political consumerism in Switzerland, analyse its determining factors and compare results to other long-studied forms of political participation. The project is significant as it provides the first comprehensive assessment of political consumerism in Switzerland and thus significantly complements political participation figures for Switzerland in times when decreasing participation rates are consistently conceived as a serious challenge for established democracies. In addition the survey instrument developed in this project is expected to become a reference for future empirical research on political consumerism worldwide

Explaining the reversed gender gap in political consumerism: personality traits as significant mediators

Research on political consumerism documents a persistent reversed gender gap, as women boycott and buycott products more often than men. Previous efforts to explain the reversed gender gap rely on classical theoretical models developed to illuminate gender differences in political participation in general. Accounting for socio‐economic and situational factors as well as socialization leaves a significant amount of the reversed gender gap unexplained, though. Adhering to recent empirical evidence of personality as an important factor influencing political behavior, we argue that gender differences in personality traits could provide an alternative explanation to account for gender disparities in political consumerism. We use original survey data specially designed to measure political consumerism in Switzerland, which also include the Big Five model of personality. We find empirical evidence that gender differences in personality traits, in particular agreeableness, explain a significant portion of the reversed gender gap in political consumerism