Political consumerism as a form of political participation: challenges and potentials of empirical measurement

Abstract

Political consumerism features prominently as an increasing form of non-institutionalized and individualized political participation. The main challenge of empirical participation research is to integrate emerging alternative forms such as political consumerism into standard measurement instruments of participation. So far, serious deficits of existing survey instruments prevent political scientists to adequately assess the role of political consumerism within the repertoire of political participation. Originally apolitical activities such as conscious purchasing behaviour are all too easily interpreted as political participation, which undermines the political science concept of political participation. The aim of this article therefore is the presentation of an empirical research strategy to analyse political consumerism as an emerging form of political participation. I use a purposively designed online survey with more than 3500 randomly selected participants to analyse and reconcile current deficits of the empirical measurement of political consumerism as emerging form of political participation. Based on the empirical insights gained by our survey, I propose an innovative measurement instrument for political consumerism to be used in international comparative survey research.