Dimensions of cosmopolitanism and their influence on political consumption: an analysis focused on Spanish consumers
International Journal of Consumer Studies
Published online on January 24, 2013
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to confirm the hypothesis that political consumption – a form of consumerism whose importance has increased during the past few years – can be considered a form of critical action, and that cosmopolitanism contributes to its development. The main objective was, first, to analyse an unexplored dimension of political consumption and, second, to obtain a measurement proposal for what some authors have called ordinary cosmopolitanism. The study, based on a survey, was divided into three sections. The first section offers a theoretical introduction to the study proposal. The second describes the hypothesis and the data analysis strategy, and proposes an operationalization of cosmopolitanism in three dimensions – symbolic cosmopolitanism, experiential cosmopolitanism and moral cosmopolitanism – which have been obtained by means of the application of categorical principal components analysis. By applying one‐way analysis of variance and Tukey's test, the third section shows the existence of significantly higher scores in these three dimensions for those individuals who have bought or boycotted products for ethical, political or environmental reasons. Finally, an ordinary least squares regression analysis was performed to test the association between cosmopolitanism and political consumerism, controlling the effect of the main socio‐demographic variables. The study confirms the initial hypothesis; therefore, political consumption could be considered a type of consumerism that is clearly related to cosmopolitanism.