Navigating social and material challenges of sustainable consumption among the Chinese urban middle class
Environmentalism, simplicity, and frugality
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 13020009 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Danning Lu (0000-0002-7136-0914, Yale University, corresponding author), Tianshu Ran (0009-0005-7483-888X, Columbia University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 12 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 45-69 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-11 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Chinese Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2057-150X • E-ISSN: 2057-1518 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/2057150x251371845 |
| OpenAlex | W4414120272 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 43 |
China's rapid economic growth has expanded the urban middle class and intensified material consumption, which functions both as a marker of social status and as a source of environmental strain. Meanwhile, some consumers increasingly embrace post-material values such as environmentalism and simplicity, creating tensions in everyday practices. Drawing on practice theories, this paper analyzes how middle-class Chinese practice sustainable consumption within these competing economic and cultural currents through forming new dispositions and rebranding of old ones. We conducted a seven-month-long participant observation, 41 in-depth interviews, and a survey of 500 people in China's largest social media-based sustainable lifestyle community, GoZero Waste. We identify environmentalism, simplicity, and frugality as the three main ideals that drive community members’ sustainable consumption practices. Facing challenges of limited infrastructure, status signaling through material well-being, and the poverty-related stigma of frugality, sustainable consumers cope with making pragmatic incremental changes and the reconstruction of non-material well-being against consumerism. They rebrand traditional values for sustainable consumption and gain support in the GoZero Waste community. We further provide a critical analysis of the conditions necessary for sustainable consumption that pertain to multiple scales. The adoption of sustainable consumption is likely to be challenging without broader transformations in both status norms and material infrastructure. Our study contributes to our understanding of sustainable consumption in emerging economies and the sociology of consumption literature by highlighting the dynamic and contested formation of practical understandings in changing practices
Consumption (sociology · Frugality · Sustainability · Sustainable community · Sustainable consumption · Sustainable development · Sustainable Living · Environmental Sustainability in Business · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Organic Food and Agriculture
The World of Consumption
Anti-consumption discourses and consumer-resistant identities
Factors influencing sustainable consumption behaviors
Distinction
The Dynamics of Social Practice
The Routledge Handbook of Political Ecology
Critical sustainable consumption
Putting practice into policy
Class Formation and Consumption among Middle-Class Professionals in Shenzhen
Re-thinking the `Good Life`
No cultural revolution? Continuity and change in consumption patterns in contemporary China
Practices of thrift among high cultural capital consumers. When economic status gets in the way of ethics
(Re)introducing embodied practical understanding to the sociology of sustainable consumption
Creating an Urban Middle Class
Going Green
Becoming Red-Pilled
Reconfiguring Chinese natures
Shark Fin City
Networked sustainable lifestyle activism
After taste
Beyond rhetoric
Active, dutiful and pragmatic
Placing 'sustainability' in context
Introduction to the Special Issue
After Practice? Material Semiotic Approaches to Consumption and Economy
After Postmaterialism
Toward a Theory of Social Practices
Consumption, taste, and the economic transition in modern China
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 1 |
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |