The democratic potential of political consumerism: The effect of visibility bias and social stratification

Abstract

Political consumerism, that is, the buying or boycotting of goods and services for political or ethical reasons, is now firmly accepted as a form of political participation increasingly adopted by the young. In this article we investigate two claims often made concerning the democratic potential of political consumerism. First, visibility bias would imply that political consumerism mainly targets visible and often symbolic goods, without real economic impact. Our results suggest that participants indeed tend to focus on goods, and neglect services, despite the growing importance of the service sector. Second, it has been argued that political consumerism is only a weapon for the ‘happy few’. Our results indeed show that especially higher educated and progressive respondents tend to use political consumerism. Although our findings are based on specific samples in Belgium, and therefore cannot be generalised, we close with some observations on the broader democratic impact of political consumerism.