No subject

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Richard Wilk's comment resonates with my experience doing values and
lifestyles research for 25 years. In several hundred studies, we found that
cultural differences in values and worldviews were vastly better predictors
to consumer behavior, than learning of the kind mentioned in neural
research, or than the kinds of variables used in conventional behaviorist
or personality psychology. Values state what is most important in life, and
worldviews state beliefs about how life works.

The key discovery that gave rise to the Cultural Creatives research
findings was that this is grows out of cultural change processes, and
psychological variables are not correlated with that. In fact, in numerous
studies in Japan, Western Europe and the United States, competition among
three competing subcultures organize cultural changes in consumption and in
sustainability-related behaviors. These are Traditionals, Moderns, and
Cultural Creatives (who are the leaders in creating change toward
sustainable culture).

Each of the three subcultures is very similar in pattern to its cognate
type in the other developed nations. In a comparison of Cultural Creatives
in the Netherlands and the U.S., we found that they are more similar to
each other than they are to their countrymen in the other two subcultures.

This was especially true for sustainability-related products, and any kind
of 'green' behaviors, or attitudes in 'green' public issues. And there was
better leverage for change by working off of values and lifestyle
preferences, and interpreting consumption changes in terms of worldviews.
Values and worldviews simply lie at a deeper level in consumer behavior
than attitudes and opinions, and are more accessible to influence through
interpersonal contact.

Paul H. Ray

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Wednesday, January 13, 2016