Time to Say \u2018Good Buy\u2019 to the Passive Consumer? A Conceptual Review of the Consumer in the Bioeconomy

Ulrich Wilke,Andreas Pyka,Sophie Urmetzer,Kristina Bogner,Matthias Mueller,Michael P Schlaile

doi:10.1007/s10806-021-09861-4

Abstract

Successful transitions to a sustainable bioeconomy require novel technologies, processes, and practices as well as a general agreement about the overarching normative direction of innovation. Both requirements necessarily involve collective action by those individuals who purchase, use, and co-produce novelties: the consumers. Based on theoretical considerations borrowed from evolutionary innovation economics and consumer social responsibility, we explore to what extent consumers’ scope of action is addressed in the scientific bioeconomy literature. We do so by systematically reviewing bioeconomy-related publications according to (i) the extent to which consumers are regarded as passive vs. active, and (ii) different domains of consumer responsibility (depending on their power to influence economic processes). We find all aspects of active consumption considered to varying degrees but observe little interconnection between domains. In sum, our paper contributes to the bioeconomy literature by developing a novel coding scheme that allows us to pinpoint different aspects of consumer activity, which have been considered in a rather isolated and undifferentiated manner. Combined with our theoretical considerations, the results of our review reveal a central research gap which should be taken up in future empirical and conceptual bioeconomy research. The system-spanning nature of a sustainable bioeconomy demands an equally holistic exploration of the consumers’ prospective and shared responsibility for contributing to its coming of age, ranging from the procurement of information on bio-based products and services to their disposal.

Highlights

The bio-based economy or, in short, bioeconomy has been promoted by both researchers and policymakers as a viable response to various societal challenges such as health issues and food security
An example of a rather active role of consumers can be found in Grundel and Dahlström (2016) who state that the involvement of consumers in innovation processes is necessary for the transformation towards a sustainable bioeconomy
Starting from the previously undocumented and merely anecdotal suspicion that the scientific bioeconomy literature could be biased towards what Blok (2020) calls the techno-economic paradigm of innovation, we have taken up the task of looking more closely and systematically into the way consumers have been treated in the contemporary bioeconomy literature

Summary

Introduction

The bio-based economy or, in short, bioeconomy has been promoted by both researchers and policymakers as a viable response to various societal challenges such as health issues and food security. There is still a great diversity in the notions of bioeconomy (Hausknost et al, 2017), which can be clustered into different ideal types ranging from the idea of increasing the use of biotechnology for industrial purposes to grounding all economic activities on the use of renewable biogenic resources (e.g., Bracco et al, 2018; Bugge et al, 2016; Hausknost et al, 2017; Meyer, 2017; Vivien et al, 2019) In addition to this conceptual diversity, one cannot expect that a bioeconomy will necessarily have a positive impact on sustainability. The bioeconomy transition must be regarded as a deeply normative endeavor that requires ethical

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