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Collaborative consumption is an emerging socio-economic model based on sharing, bartering, gifting, swapping, renting, lending and borrowing, enabled by new technologies and peer communities. When providing access to underutilised or idle assets, it promotes efficient use of resources, reduces their environmental burden and can rebuild social capital. For this potential to bring economic interests in line with positive environmental and social impact, collaborative consumption has been considered a promising approach towards more sustainable consumption. Nevertheless, its market uptake is still quite limited and further research is necessary to identify and understand the conditions that could support its wider introduction and scaling up. This thesis investigates how consumers’ values may contribute to the acceptance, adoption and diffusion of collaborative consumption. Drawing from two different, if not contrasting, theoretical perspectives to understand consumer behaviour – social psychology and social practice theory – the research explores the possibility that individual values influence, and are influenced by, the ‘meaning’ element of social practices, thereby facilitating or hindering participation. The examination was conducted through mixed methods research using Ecomodo, a UK-based online community marketplace for lending and borrowing, as a case study. Initial quantitative data collection and analysis was conducted to measure 63 Ecomodo users’ values through Schwartz’s Portrait Value Questionnaire. These results were followed up with 10 semi-structured interviews facilitated by a series of visual prompts. Findings suggest that variation between the values held by users of Ecomodo and by a representative sample of the UK population may be partly responsible for Ecomodo’s failure to become mainstream. In particular, the research found that there is a mutual relationship between individual values and the meanings that underlie practices (e.g. lending and borrowing). However, considerations around 4 ‘value’, the perceived convenience and practicality of a certain behaviour/practice, also play a role in determining participation in collaborative consumption. This led to the advancement of the Individual-Practice Framework, which complements approaches from social practice theory with insights from social psychology, as a configuration able to offer an alternative perspective to understand consumer behaviour. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the implications for sustainable design and possible practical applications of this framework.

The aim of this thesis is threefold: to investigate, from the viewpoint of the home country, the effects of macroeconomic variables and policies on the flow of remittances; and to investigate the microeconomic foundations of the effects of remittances on both household expenditure and the labour force, with a specific application to Kosovo. For the macroeconomic determinants of remittances, a unique dataset is assembled using World Bank data with policy variable data collected from individual countries in the sample. For the implications of remittances on household expenditure and the labour force the United Nations Development Program Remittances Survey is used. The estimates suggest that the key determinants of remittances/GDP and remittances per capita are real living standards in both the home (negatively) and the main host country (positively). The effect of GDP in the host country is not linear, but increases at decreasing rate. An original contribution of this section is the inclusion of specific policies applied to migrants and their remittances. However, despite the support for such policies in the literature, the policy variables modelled are statistically insignificant across several specifications. In considering the effect of remittances on consumption, whether the household receives remittances or not is interacted with the log of income to examine if the spending of remittances is different from other sources of income. This variable is statistically insignificant for the share of expenditure on current consumption and education. However, the effect for the share of expenditure on durable goods is positive, albeit small. The model extends the literature by considering the migrant‟s involvement in various ways with the home family as possible control mechanisms for the use of remittances. The results give three significant effects suggesting that, compared to other households, when income increases: households who receive advice on spending remittances increase the share of expenditure on current consumption; households who get more visits decrease the share of expenditure on current consumption and increase the share of expenditure on education. In addition, addressing the impact of remittances on the labour supply of individuals in Kosovo, the results suggests that remittances per capita are insignificant with regard to working age members being active in labour market and being employed for males and females. However, when the total value of remittances per household is used, the estimate suggests an increase in the probability of males becoming active in the labour market, though the effect is very small. Overall, the findings suggest that the policies aimed at increasing remittances from migrants are not effective. Furthermore, there is little evidence that changes in income levels for households receiving remittances are spent very differently from the households not receiving them; small differences are found for the durable goods share and if the migrant has some direct involvement with the home family. Finally, contrary to expectations, remittances are not found to affect the labour supply in the majority of the empirical work in this thesis. Such findings may indicate that the policy relevance for remittances is not as important as suggested by the literature for developing countries, especially for those with a similar profile to Kosovo.

No description available.

There are approximately one billion people predominantly in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) who live in extreme poverty because they are adversely linked to the process of globalization and not optimally integrated in global value chains. In the SSA region, agriculture is the main occupation where most of the rural population are employed and earn incomes. The horticulture sector a subset of agriculture is one of the value creating sectors where opportunities exist for the rural population to link and connect to the global economy through participation in global value chains (GVCs). The global value chain perspective has been used in a number of studies analyze how global buyers organize and control operations with local suppliers. Kenya is a leading exporter of horticulture produce, where the large and medium suppliers are considerably linked to GVCs but not the small suppliers. Ghana is developing its horticulture sector where local suppliers are considerably small in size and adversely connected to GVCs. Effective participation and connection to GVCs is considered as a perquisite and under certain conditions opportunities for local supplier upgrading, leading to income generation and poverty alleviation. Local suppliers, especially small ones in both economies are challenged due to limited market access, stringent standards and quality requirements (conditions of participation) imposed by global buyers, and an inefficient operating environment. High exclusion levels due to non-compliance with high standard and quality requirements imposed by global buyer’s increases vulnerability and risks which tends to prolong the duration of poverty. Competitiveness remains a key issue due to the lack of investment in upgrading resulting in low performance and exclusion of a number of suppliers from participation in global horticulture value chains. High exclusion rates have a negative impact on incomes which further exacerbates the incidence of poverty. On the other hand opportunities for the acquisition of skills, learning and upgrading that would reduce exclusion depends on conditions of participation – governance in GVCs imposed by global buyers In addition, transaction costs in both countries are high due to inefficient infrastructure and support institutions. There is evidence in the literature that participation in global horticulture valve chains does contribute to increased incomes but it is unclear if this has contributed or not to reducing poverty levels in Kenya and Ghana. Kenya is selected as a case study because the horticulture sector is mature has extensive experience in participating in global horticulture value chains but poverty levels remain very high. It currently ranks 145th out of 186 countries on the 2013 Human Development Index. Ghana is selected to complement the analysis because its horticulture sector is at an infant stage where the government is seeking to use the process as a diversification strategy to reduce poverty. On the same index it ranks 135th out of 186 countries. Data and information was collated from 25 global horticulture value chain participants and 6 informants complemented with secondary data were used for the analysis. This research argues that the GVC perspective in its current form is not capable of delivering the expected poverty alleviation outcomes because its emphasis on conditions of participation, the operational environment and ways in which these elements could adversely or not affect the effective participation of local suppliers leading to poverty alleviation is missing. The empirical evidence from the horticulture sectors in Kenya and Ghana supports the view that participation in global horticulture value chains does contribute to poverty alleviation but has been constrained due to a lack of focus on number of issues including the enabling operational environment. Strategies and policies that could inform a more inclusive model of GVCs that could improve the conditions of participation of local suppliers are proposed for consideration.

This thesis uses the analogy between poverty measures and products to explore how poverty measures are designed, produced, distributed and used by different communities. Three historical case studies are analysed with this product approach: Charles Booth’s poverty surveys of London developed in the late nineteenth century, Mollie Orshansky’s poverty thresholds in the USA in the 1960s and two international measures of the Human Development Index (HDI) and the dollar-a-day in the late twentieth century. The product approach to statistical measurements offers a number of advantages. It shows how poverty measures do not provide numbers only, but packages of complementary products. Booth produced a set of innovations from his survey: numbers, maps and causal analyses; Orshansky a system for statistical and administrative use; and the UNDP a platform for human development – all three facilitating action to reduce poverty. Sometimes the products compete strongly in the market, as the UNDP’s HDI and World Bank’s dollar-a-day have done. Sometimes they help to establish new modes of social science, as Booth’s products did. Sometimes the original designs prove resistant to innovation as Orshansky’s thresholds did. More generally, this product approach places the numbers in their historical context. It demonstrates the importance of both the producers and the users in what happens to poverty measurements; it looks in particular at the way in which such measures are influenced by the interests of the different user groups and their political environment. It shows how co-production between the producers and users of poverty measures, or the lack thereof, influences the trust given to numbers.

Laurence J. Kotlikoff. / Includes index. / Bibliography: p. [497]-524.

Statistics contribute to the understanding of events by objectifying phenomena, as they are perceived to reflect or be an approximation of reality. This perception is based on the premise that statistical tools are straightforward, apolitical facts. However, quantification and its results are not objective. Definitions are needed beforehand to determine the phenomenon to be measured and the aim of the quantification. Thus, statistics face debates on methods, interpretation and use. Using the Argentine cost of living indices released in 1918, 1924 and 1935 as a case study and following a process of de-construction/construction/re-construction of the series, this thesis studies how, why and by whom statistics are made and used. It suggests that the political economy plays a crucial role in the history of the Argentine cost of living index in the first half of the twentieth century. In the de-construction phase, the thesis analyses various reports to arrive at an understanding how the indices were originally estimated. The construction stage then discusses the people and institutions involved in the production of each index and the methodology that they used, placing both within the political, economic and social context. It looks at how and why each index was produced by analysing their context, uses, contemporary reception and significance. Moreover, the pitfalls that come from the assumptions and methods underlying the indices are demonstrated using data available to those who produced them. Lastly, each CLI estimate is re-constructed by correcting its main pitfalls using the information available when the series were initially developed to depict how different assumptions result in different series. This leads to an alternative cost of living index being presented for the period 1912-1943. The re-construction also comprises a comparison in tandem of the Argentine, US, British and German cost of living indices.

Multidimensional deprivation and persistent poverty are important research areas within the poverty measurement literature. Still, both encompass measurement issues for which methodological solutions are yet to be analysed. The thesis that I present here analyses three specific measurement issues, identified as relevant within these research areas, and proposes methodological approaches to tackle each of them. First, it evaluates the effect of different demographic population structures on societal multidimensional deprivation incidence comparisons. The results of this evaluation demonstrate that societal multidimensional comparisons reflect not only differences in relative deprivation but also differences in the demographic composition of the societies to be compared. These differences in the demographic structure of the population, thus, confound societal multidimensional deprivation comparisons. To tackle this comparability problem, the application of direct and indirect standardisation methods is proposed and analysed in this context. Second, it studies the effect of differences in need, exhibited across individuals from different demographic population subgroups or households of different sizes and compositions, on multidimensional deprivation incidence profiles. To address differences in needs and enhance individual or household comparability, I propose a family of multidimensional deprivation indices that describes how much deprivation two demographically heterogeneous units with different needs must exhibit to be catalogued as equivalently deprived. The obtained empirical results demonstrate that neglecting differences in needs yields biased multidimensional deprivation incidence profiles. The results also shed light on the ability of my proposed family of measures to capture these differences in need effectively. Third, this thesis analyses the reliability of persistent poverty measures in the presence of survey non-response. The obtained empirical results indicate that persistent poverty measures based on balanced panel estimates that do not account for the relationship between survey non-response and the socioeconomic status of the household provide a significantly biased picture of the intertemporal phenomenon. The methodologies that I present in this thesis are meant foremost to be easy to implement and understand by policymakers. As such, they are proposed as methodological tools to improve the measurement and analysis of poverty in the policy context.

This thesis employs interpretive research via ethnographic fieldwork to explore the complex relationship between the postmodern self and consumption symbolism. In postmodernity, where society becomes more global but simultaneously decentred, pastiche-like and hyperreal, the self is encountering a number of dilemmas propelled by the looming threat of personal meaninglessness. In order to attain a sense of existence, the self appears to seek the meaningfulness of life from and through symbolic consumption. Indeed, postmodernity is primarily a consumer culture where consumption is central to the meaningful practice of our everyday life. The postmodern self makes consumption choices not only from the products' utilities but also from their symbolic meanings, the function of which operates in two directions: outward in constructing the social world, social-symbolism; and inward in constructing our self-identity, self-symbolism. To understand these phenomena, ethnographic fieldwork of four distinctive groups - a group of male femaling transgenders, a group of young nouveaux riches, a group of young extremist Buddhists and a group of young provincial women - are conducted in Bangkok, Thailand. Principally, the research explores how the informants employ everyday consumption symbolically in their self-creation processes. It also examines how the informants appropriate symbolic meanings through and from their lived and mediated experiences, and incorporate these meanings into their symbolic self-projects by means of everyday consumption. Moreover, it observes how the informants negotiate their self-social symbolism through the process of self-others identification within their friendship groups. The interpretations unfold a number of surprising outcomes which provide insight into the informants' self-projects and their consumption experiences. To conceptualise the interpretations, a model - Consumption Symbolism and the Harmonising Self - is proposed.