The negotiated consumption of sustainability

Companies encourage consumers to purchase environmentally sustainable products. The nexus between making and buying sustainable products, however, does not by itself generate sustainable outcomes. Sustainability results from users developing new practices around products and technologies, which we call ‘negotiated consumption’. By extending the existing understanding of organizational practices through combining perspectives from social studies of science and technology, and consumption studies, we identify the nature of the negotiated consumption of sustainability. We argue that the effectiveness of environmental strategy, which meets demand for sustainable outcomes, can be only understood through the appreciation of how organizations, and their products and customers, are implicated in, and co-produce, the processes and practices that deliver sustainability.

► The purchase of sustainable products alone does not generate sustainable outcomes. ► Sustainability results from non-linear interactions between users and products. ► Effective strategy recognizes that organizations and users coproduce sustainability.