The Future of Consumption

The Future of Consumption PDF

Author: Kristina Bäckström

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-11-05

Total Pages: 397

ISBN-13: 3031332466

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This open access book presents three future consumption trends—technology, sustainability, and wellbeing—and discusses what impact those trends will have on the ways we shop. What will be important to the consumers of the future? And how will their retail experiences look and feel? Will technology, sustainability, and wellbeing trends fundamentally change how we consume? And how should retail managers respond to these trends in order to provide the customer experiences of the future? Blending academic perspectives with reflections from innovative retailers, this book explores all these questions and more. Essential reading for retail managers who want to know how future consumption trends will affect the industry, this book also benefits students and researchers of retail and consumption who want to better understand how these interdependent fields are linked.

ASEAN 2030

ASEAN 2030 PDF

Author: ADBI

Publisher: Brookings Institution Press

Published: 2016-03-08

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 4899740522

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This book investigates long-term development issues for members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). It finds that with the proper policy mix—including domestic structural reforms and bold initiatives for regional integration—ASEAN has the potential to reach by 2030 the average quality of life enjoyed today in advanced economies and to fulfill its aspirations to become a resilient, inclusive, competitive, and harmonious (RICH) region. Key challenges moving forward are to enhance macroeconomic and financial stability, support equitable growth, promote competitiveness and innovation, and protect the environment. Overcoming these challenges to build a truly borderless economic region implies eliminating remaining barriers to the flow of goods, services, and production factors; strengthening competitiveness and the institutional framework; and updating some governing principles. But ASEAN should not merely copy the European Union. It must maintain its flexibility and pragmatism without creating a bloated regional bureaucracy. The study’s main message is that through closer integration, ASEAN can form a partnership for achieving shared prosperity in the region and around the globe.

Transitioning to Responsible Consumption and Production

Transitioning to Responsible Consumption and Production PDF

Author: Lisa McNeill

Publisher: MDPI

Published: 2020-10-15

Total Pages: 2

ISBN-13: 3038978728

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Responsible Consumption and Production, the twelfth UN Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 12), calls for significant change in how we view both production and consumption norms. It is predicted that, at the current rate of population growth and consumption, the natural resources needed to sustain current lifestyles would require the equivalent of almost three planets by 2050. It is clear that change is required, involving action from everyone from the producer to the final consumer. Since sustainable consumption aims for world citizens to ‘do better with less’, all aspects of this change must be carefully considered with regard to critical ecological and social models that transform all production and consumption practices that are recognised as negative. Transitioning to Responsible Consumption and Production focuses on the transition to responsible production and consumption, and models that aid that transition. It offers a multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder conversation on this issue, with a focus on the intersection between encouraging and enhancing sustainable production processes, and enacting behaviour change and socially oriented decision-making by consumers. Transitioning to Responsible Consumption and Production is part of MDPI's new Open Access book series Transitioning to Sustainability. With this series, MDPI pursues environmentally and socially relevant research which contributes to efforts toward a sustainable world. Transitioning to Sustainability aims to add to the conversation about regional and global sustainable development according to the 17 SDGs. Set to be published in 2020, the book series is intended to reach beyond disciplinary, even academic boundaries.

The Future of Productivity

The Future of Productivity PDF

Author: OECD

Publisher: OECD Publishing

Published: 2015-12-11

Total Pages: 120

ISBN-13: 9264248536

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This book addresses the rising productivity gap between the global frontier and other firms, and identifies a number of structural impediments constraining business start-ups, knowledge diffusion and resource allocation (such as barriers to up-scaling and relatively high rates of skill mismatch).

Challenging Consumption

Challenging Consumption PDF

Author: Anna R. Davies

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-05-16

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1136734902

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Sustainable consumption is a central research topic in academic discourses of sustainable development and global environmental change. Informed by a number of disciplinary perspectives, this book is structured around four key themes in sustainable consumption research: Living, Moving, Dwelling and Futures. The collection successfully balances theoretical insights with grounded case studies, on mobility, heating, washing and eating practices, and concludes by exploring future sustainable consumption research pathways and policy recommendations. Theoretical frameworks are advanced throughout the volume, especially in relation to social practice theory, theories of behavioural change and innovative visioning and backcasting methodologies. This groundbreaking book draws on some conceptual approaches which move beyond the responsibility of the individual consumer to take into account wider social, economic and political structures and processes in order to highlight both possibilities for and challenges to sustainable consumption. This approach enables students and policy-makers alike to easily recognise the applicability of social science theories.

The Future of Consumer Society

The Future of Consumer Society PDF

Author: Maurie J. Cohen

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0198768559

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Maurie J. Cohen shows how consumer society is changing due to demographic ageing, rising income inequality, political paralysis, resource scarcity, and steady jobs being replaced by freelancing. He examines how people are striving to find new ways to ensure livelihoods and the role that worker-consumer cooperatives could play.

Consumption, Population, and Sustainability

Consumption, Population, and Sustainability PDF

Author: Audrey Chapman

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 376

ISBN-13:

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The combined contributions of science and religion to resolving environmental problems are far greater than each could offer working in isolation. Scientific findings are central to understanding the impact of human populations on the environment, but a more ecologically sustainable future will require radical changes in values, lifestyle choices, and consumption patterns -- a revolution that falls squarely within the domain of the religious community. Consumption, Population, and Sustainability is an outgrowth of a conference sponsored jointly by the Boston Theological Institute and the American Association for the Advancement of Science that brought together more than 250 scientists and people of religious faith to discuss the environmental impact of consumption patterns and population trends, and to consider alternative and more equitable value systems, economic arrangements, and technologies that will be necessary for achieving a more sustainable future. The book: provides a brief history of the dialogue between science and religion on environmental issues outlines potential contributions of the religious community to the debate about global sustainability offers a science-based assessment of issues such as carrying capacity, sustainability indicators, and the environmental impacts of consumer-based lifestyles considers religious and theological perspectives on consumption and population from a variety of viewpoints including Roman Catholic, Jewish, Greek Orthodox, and Islamic examines the ethical and policy dimensions of reorienting today's consumer society to one more focused on values, spiritual growth, and relationships. Both the scientific and religious communities can make important contributions to understanding and responding to the impact of population growth and consumption patterns on environmental sustainability. This volume represents a significant step in establishing an ongoing dialogue between the communities, and provides a thought-provoking overview of the issues for scientists, theologians, and anyone concerned with the future of global sustainability.

The Interdisciplinary Science of Consumption

The Interdisciplinary Science of Consumption PDF

Author: Stephanie D. Preston

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2014-08

Total Pages: 343

ISBN-13: 0262027674

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Scholars from psychology, neuroscience, economics, animal behavior, and evolution describe the latest research on the causes and consequences of overconsumption. Our drive to consume—our desire for food, clothing, smart phones, and megahomes—evolved from our ancestors' drive to survive. But the psychological and neural processes that originally evolved to guide mammals toward resources that are necessary but scarce may mislead us in modern conditions of material abundance. Such phenomena as obesity, financial bubbles, hoarding, and shopping sprees suggest a mismatch between our instinct to consume and our current environment. This volume brings together research from psychology, neuroscience, economics, marketing, animal behavior, and evolution to explore the causes and consequences of consumption. Contributors consider such topics as how animal food-storing informs human consumption; the downside of evolved “fast and frugal” rules for eating; how future discounting and the draw toward immediate rewards influence food consumption, addiction, and our ability to save; overconsumption as social display; and the policy implications of consumption science. Taken together, the chapters make the case for an emerging interdisciplinary science of consumption that reflects commonalities across species, domains, and fields of inquiry. By carefully comparing mechanisms that underlie seemingly disparate outcomes, we can achieve a unified understanding of consumption that could benefit both science and society.

Virtual Economies

Virtual Economies PDF

Author: Vili Lehdonvirta

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2014-05-09

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 0262535068

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How the basic concepts of economics—including markets, institutions, and money—can be used to create and analyze economies based on virtual goods. In the twenty-first-century digital world, virtual goods are sold for real money. Digital game players happily pay for avatars, power-ups, and other game items. But behind every virtual sale, there is a virtual economy, simple or complex. In this book, Vili Lehdonvirta and Edward Castronova introduce the basic concepts of economics into the game developer's and game designer's toolkits. Lehdonvirta and Castronova explain how the fundamentals of economics—markets, institutions, and money—can be used to create or analyze economies based on artificially scarce virtual goods. They focus on virtual economies in digital games, but also touch on serious digital currencies such as Bitcoin as well as virtual economies that emerge in social media around points, likes, and followers. The theoretical emphasis is on elementary microeconomic theory, with some discussion of behavioral economics, macroeconomics, sociology of consumption, and other social science theories relevant to economic behavior. Topics include the rational choice model of economic decision making; information goods versus virtual goods; supply, demand, and market equilibrium; monopoly power; setting prices; and externalities. The book will enable developers and designers to create and maintain successful virtual economies, introduce social scientists and policy makers to the power of virtual economies, and provide a useful guide to economic fundamentals for students in other disciplines.

Global Carbon Dioxide Recycling

Global Carbon Dioxide Recycling PDF

Author: Koji Hashimoto

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-05-24

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 981138584X

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This brief describes the current critical situation of global warming and shows its solution by renewable energy use. The author has long studied the development of new materials with chemical functions and is renowned as the first advocate of power-to-gas. He established the technology to convert renewable energy to synthesized natural gas, methane by electrolytic hydrogen generation using surplus electricity from renewable energy, and subsequent methanation of carbon dioxide by reaction with hydrogen.In the first part of this brief, data on global warming and energy consumption are shown and analyzed from the author’s keen point of view. The second part introduces the author’s research results on key materials for global carbon dioxide recycling and constructed pilot plants based on them. Finally, an evidence-based solution to maintain sustainable development by using only renewable energy is described as a future prospect.This book is useful not only for researchers and students studying chemical engineering, materials, or energy, but also for general citizens who are interested in the global environment.