当前,中国正处于消费需求不断升级和转型的关键时期,亟需抓住当前的转型契机推动可持续消费。尽管可持续消费的概念一经提出即引起国际社会的广泛讨论,但国内对可持续消费的研究却相对较少且进展缓慢,相关理论方法的多样化是造成这种局面的原因之一。基于个人主义的社会心理学研究范式不擅长将个人行动及其动机与更广大的社会(情境)联系起来,而经济学模型通常又将"非理性"的因素排除在概念框架之外。系统结构主义范式强调结构和技术因素对消费行为的影响,但对个体认知及行动意愿方面却少有关注。环境社会学中的社会实践法恰恰提供了一个将个人主义和系统结构主义两个方面整合起来的模型框架。基于环境社会学的视角,采用社会实践方法构建框架模型将更适用于研究中国的可持续消费问题。未来推动中国的可持续消费研究,需要进行更综合全面的分析并侧重行为变迁、结构性因素影响、个体差异化需求与生活风格等方面的研究。
China is at the crucial stage for upgrading and transformation of consumption demand, thus it is especially urgent to take such a transition opportunity to promote sustainable consumption in China. Although it has brought wide discussion in the international world as the concept of sustainable consumption was proposed, research on sustainable consumption in China has been relatively scarce and progressing slowly. Diversity of theories and approaches to consumption is one potential reason resulting in such status.With the individualist approach,social psychological paradigm is weak in connecting individual action and motivation with the ″wider society″(situational context), and the economic model usually excludes the irrational factors from the conceptual schemes. The systematic and structural paradigm emphasizes particular influences of structural and technological factors on consumption behavior, but pays little attention to individual perception and action motivation. The social practice approach in environmental sociology has offered a framework that integrates both individualist and(systematic)structural paradigms. From the perspective of environmental sociology, we propose to build a conceptual framework based on the Social Practice Approach, which also applies to the study of issues of sustainable consumption in China. To promote Chinese sustainable consumption, it demands more comprehensive analysis and emphasis on research of behavioral transition, impacts of structural factors, individual differentiated demand and their lifestyles.