Value Change and Political Action

• Author: Lauren Copeland
• Published date: 01 March 2014
• Date: 01 March 2014
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1532673X13494235
• Subject Matter: Articles

American Politics Research

2014, Vol. 42(2) 257 –282

© The Author(s) 2013

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DOI: 10.1177/1532673X13494235

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Article

Value Change and

Political Action:

Postmaterialism, Political

Consumerism, and

Political Participation

Lauren Copeland1

Abstract

Understanding how people engage in politics, and what motivates them

to do so, has been an ongoing concern in the social science literature.

Over the past decade, scholarly interest in boycotts and buycotts, which

collectively comprise political consumerism—the deliberate purchase

or avoidance of products for political or ethical reasons—has increased.

However, these activities not been well conceptualized, and it is not clear

what motivates people to engage in political consumerism. In this paper,

I theorize that postmaterialist values increase the likelihood of engaging

in political consumerism in the United States. To test this expectation,

I use original, nationally representative U.S. survey data, and I find that

postmaterialist values significantly increase the likelihood of engaging in

political consumerism, while materialist values not, with controls in place

for partisanship, ideology, and other democratic norms.

Keywords

political consumerism, boycotts, buycotts, political participation, civic

engagement, postmaterialism, lifestyle politics

1University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

Corresponding Author:

Lauren Copeland, Department of Political Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA

93106-9420, USA.

Email: Lauren.Copeland@gmail.com

494235APR42210.1177/1532673X13494235American Politics ResearchCopeland

research-article2013

258 American Politics Research 42(2)

What it means to participate in politics has changed since the behavioral rev-

olution in the social sciences of the 1950s. Traditionally, most studies of

political participation focused on electoral participation, such as voting,

working for political parties, contacting public officials, and attending politi-

cal meetings or rallies (Berelson, Lazarsfeld, & McPhee, 1954,; Lazarsfeld,

Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944, 1948; Verba & Nie, 1972). Beginning in the

1970s, however, the frequency with which Americans engaged in electoral

activities began to decline (Macedo & Alex-Assensoh, 2005; Putnam, 2000;

Rosenstone & Hansen, 1993).

At the same time, the frequency with which people engaged in non-

electoral political acts increased (Dalton, 2006a; Norris, 2002). Since then,

nonelectoral modes of participation like protesting and signing petitions have

become at least as common as electoral behaviors (Dalton, 2006a, 2009;

Micheletti & McFarland, 2012; Norris, 2002). For this reason, many research-

ers contend that political behavior is not so much in decline as it is changing

shape (Bennett, 1998; Dalton, 2006a, 2006b, 2009; Micheletti, Føllesdal, &

Stolle, 2004; Norris, 2002; Zukin, Keeter, Andolina, Jenkins, & Delli Carpini,

2006). In this view, people still participate in politics, but in ways that chal-

lenge our traditional understanding of political behavior.

The rise of political consumerism since the 1970s is an example of how

people’s political practices are changing. Political consumerism refers to the

deliberate purchase or avoidance of products or brand for political or ethical

reasons. Political consumerism includes two types of activities—boycotts

and buycotts—and it is much more common than many people think (Baek,

2010; Copeland, in press; Forno & Ceccarini, 2006; Neilson, 2010; Neilson

& Paxton, 2010; Newman & Bartels, 2011; Strømsnes, 2009).

Although our understanding of political consumerism has increased over

the past decade, an interesting problem in the literature involves whether

political consumerism is, in fact, “political” (Micheletti & Stolle, 2012;

Schlozman, 2012; Schudson, 2007; Van Deth, 2012). Unlike voting or work-

ing for a political party, political consumerism is not directed at the state,

coordinated by formal political organizations, or driven by large-scale elite

communication (Shudson, 2007). Moreover, it is not clear what general fac-

tors predispose some people toward political consumerism, and therefore

what motivates people to engage in political consumerism.

Postmaterialist values have been offered as an explanation (Baek, 2010;

Dalton, 2006a; Inglehart, 1971, 1997; Micheletti, 2010; Micheletti et al., 2004;

Norris, 2002; Stolle, Hooghe, & Micheletti, 2005). According to Inglehart’s

(1971, 1977, 1981, 1990, 1997) theory of value change, postmaterialist values

include a variety of quality of life concerns related to environmental protection,