Prosumerism as a model of consumer behaviour: environmental aspect

The article discusses modern consumption practices from the unity of economic, social and environmental aspects perspective. This unity is a condition for sustainable development, but in modern society economic indicators dominate and ecology is on the second place. Such circumstance is a consequence of the socio-economic system, known as a "consumer society". The article is focused on the identification of environmentally-based consumer behaviour models in modern society. The goal of the research is analysing the prosumerist model of consumption as an alternative to consumerism from an environmental position. The study is based on the concepts of sustainable development and consumer society, and also the idea of prosumerism as a new practice of production and consumption. The work used the method of involved observation, comparative analysis, and descriptive method. The scientific novelty of the results is the justification of prosumerism as an environmentally oriented model of consumer behaviour. The consumer society is characterized by mass production, increasing of free time, individual consumption, and a change in employment patterns in favour of the goods and services production. The growth of the individual wants and the expansion of production lead to consumption resources increasing. The consumer model cares about neither resource conservation nor future generations. The environment and natural wealth are considered as a manufacturing resource. In response to the negative effects of consumerism the concepts of ranscious consumption, ethical and creative consumerism, highlighting the moral and aesthetic foundations of consumption are formed. The author thinks that in these conceptions the consumer has a passive role because he is not involved in the creation of the product. An alternative to uncontrolled consumption may become a prosumerism as a model of behaviour based on active consumer involvement in the production process. The prosumers' activity promotes resource conservation, the use of attainable materials, the creation products"on-demand". Since the producer is both a consumer and prosumer, the product a priori is important to the creator because of uniqueness and sense of personal involvement. As examples of successful prosumersist practices two projects wherein urban communities act as prosumers were sort. The first project concerns the citizens' involvement in solving urban problems and city management. The second one takes place in Norway and relates to attracting consumers to electricity production. The result of this project was the optimization of energy consumption. Both projects demonstrate social and environmental effects. The author comes to the conclusion: in order prosumerism will become a stable model of consumer behaviour, personal interest of consumers is necessary based on the possession or access to the means of production. In this case, prosumer activities can have not only economic results, but also social effects: public involvement in solving problems, including environmental ones, communities development, and increased civil responsibility.

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