Using permanent income life-cycle theory, I analyze the effects of liquidity constraints on the household’s ability to smooth life time consumption due to a change in housing and stock market wealth. Using data from the Canadian national accounts and chartered bank balance sheets I test if improved access to housing wealth due to fundamental shifts to the banking industry in the 1980s has lowered liquidity constraints and improved the household’s ability to smooth consumption.

This study sought to provide a theory driven model to explain how consumers make their purchasing decisions between genuine products and products they know are counterfeit. The influences of Goal-Driven Theory, Morality, and Prospect Theory were included as purchase decisions considerations. To measure their influence, while accounting for product attributes, purchasing decisions were assessed in choice sets as provided by Discrete Choice Experiment. Results found support for using Goal-Driven Theory and Prospect Theory to explain consumer purchasing decisions between genuine and counterfeit products. Morality was not a significant factor in the findings. Theoretical contributions and Managerial implications are discussed.

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This thesis begins with the simple observation that the term ‘green consumption’ would have appeared, at the very least, oxymoronic to those concerned with environmental issues some thirty years ago. Yet now it is a commonplace aspect of popular, academic and policy discourse in the global north. In recognizing the diversity of products and services that fall under the rubric of ‘green consumption,’ this project situates it as a form of discursive positioning and a potential set of a practices that indicate a ‘friendly’ or benign association between consumption and the environment. The thesis has three components. Firstly, it reviews the literature on consumer culture and environmentalism, highlighting relevant thematic debates concerning the critique of consumer culture and its potential effects upon the environment. Secondly, the thesis constructs a post-Foucauldian ‘analytics of green consumption’ in order to understand such a radical shift in representations of consumption and environmental thinking. Thirdly, the thesis employs this analytics to examine two dominant ‘environmentalities’ or programmes of green consumption – Eco Labelling and the Ecological Footprint – wherein the advanced liberal rhetorics of ‘choice,’ ‘freedom’ and ‘responsibility’ are found to operate in different ways. Drawing upon the work of Rose (1999), Barry et al. (1996) and others, the thesis shows how these ‘informational’ techniques are predicated upon and reproduce specific conceptions of consumer behaviour, encouraging the formation of ‘green consumer-subjects.’ It is argued that the terrain of consumption has become the primary locus where political, social, economic and cultural elements overlap to shape the decisions of consumers. The field of consumption is being restructured around lifestyle choice-driven models of responsible subjectivity, with consumption becoming the key means for shaping the conduct of individual citizens. The thesis goes on to argue that such a market-based approach to engendering green consumption is problematic in terms of its conception of how consumer choice and freedom are constrained, raising difficult issues for policy efforts in this area. The thesis also points toward the limits of post-Foucauldian analyses of green consumption, especially the impossibility of knowing whether, and for what reasons, practices of green consumption are taken up by consumers. / Thesis (Master, Sociology) -- Queen's University, 2009-09-25 08:48:47.876

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The first half of this research is an attempt to provide a solid theoretical foundation of the various theories of the consumption function and the empirical evidence. Both the theoretical foundation and the empirical evidence is wide-ranging, spanning a period of over fifty years, with a discussion on the early Keynesian consumption function through to the influence of the rational expectations approach to economic modelling. The emphasis is both on the macro as well as micro aspects of the consumption function. The second half of this research considers the nature of the consumption function in South Africa. This is done with the application of time-series data to three particular models that could provide some insight, and answer certain broad questions about the behaviour of consumption in South Africa. More specifically this is achieved through disaggregation by considering demand functions for specific items of consumption. / Thesis (M. Com.)-University of Durban-Westville, 1996.

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In this study, 22 homes in Milton, Ontario had their electricity consumption monitored for between seven and 15 months, and they were provided access to their data via an online webportal. The webportal provided appliance-level and house-level data, allowed them to set consumption goals, and schedule when their appliances would be used. The households were chosen to participate because they had previously expressed interest in advanced smart meter grid technologies, and when contacted again by Milton Hydro, they agreed to participate in the study. The main question being asked in this research is: what effect, if any, does having access to one???s consumption data have on consumption? To investigate this question, consumption data from the monitoring period, and the previous year (the base year) were obtained from Milton Hydro and were used to determine how consumption changed between these two periods. The consumption data for the cooling months were weather normalized to account for increases in consumption that result from cooling the dwelling. Data regarding users??? engagement with the webportal, including how often they would login, for how long and what pages they were visiting, were collected from the webportal. An engagement index was adapted and refined from Peterson & Carrabis (2008), and along with the engagement data from the webportal, was used to calculate the engagement index. Data from two surveys were used to profile the households and to investigate their attitudes and behaviours towards electricity consumption. There were several key findings. First, engagement with the webportal was quite low; the engagement index (a value between zero and one) for the first three months the hub was open averaged 0.285 and ranged from 0 to 0.523. These numbers dropped by the end of the seventh month to an average engagement index of 0.163, and ranged from 0 to 0.341. The second key finding was that the hubs were not consistently conserving electricity; for the first three months, 10 of the 22 households had conserved electricity between the base year and monitoring period; at the end of the seventh month, this dropped to nine households. At the end of the third month, the change in consumption was an increase of 8.22%, and at the end of month seven it was an increase of 7.71%. The third finding was that there did not appear to be a connection between energy conserving attitudes and energy conserving behaviours. In the surveys, 12 households stated that their goal was to conserve electricity, however, of these 12, only four actually conserved electricity at the end of month seven. Finally, when comparing the engagement index with the change in consumption, there appeared to be only a weak, negative correlation between the variables. This weak correlation may be a result of two things: (1) a lack of engagement, which limits the ability to find correlation between engagement and change in consumption; (2) there is actually a weak relation between the two variables. Based on these findings, some recommendations are put forth, specifically about how to engage householders with the webportal. Suggestions include getting applications for mobile devices, and delivering electricity saving tips to households via e-mail, text message, and/or on the homepage of the portal. These tips could be given based on the season, or based on the goals that were set, and would encourage and explain to householders how to decrease consumption.

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