Consumption and Time Use

Consumption is related to time in multifarious, complex ways. Obviously, consumption takes time, whether it is watching a movie, buying groceries, or driving your new car. However, consumption can also save time, such as when the new car replaces your cheaper but slower bicycle. Consumption and time are also connected because of the time it takes to earn the money required for consumption. Working longer hours and earning more money per hour both allow more consumption. At the same time, longer working hours leave less time for consumption, and a higher salary implies more forgone earning for each hour spent consuming rather than producing. Consumption and production are closely intertwined, and balancing them is just as much a matter of time as it is of money. Changing patterns of time use change are both the cause and the consequence of changing patterns in consumption.

Consumption, both cultural and material, has long been known to be strongly based on class. It is argued that a shift occurred in the social functions that consumption fulfills. Where Fordist production yielded standardized goods for the masses, post-Fordist production for affluent buyers became increasingly differentiated. Producers anticipate consumers' potential desires, allowing consumers to find symbolic significance and self-expression through consumer practices (called “sign value” by Jean Baudrillard). Material and cultural consumption have become more central in people's lives, to the point that some argue we live in a consumer culture and that the place in the consumption process gains importance as an identity marker next to, or even instead of, the place in the production process. The symbolic significance of consumption shifted emphasis, consumption being interpreted more from a general cultural or psychological perspective than from a class perspective.

[Page 333]People increasingly aspire to levels of consumption that do not seem to match their financial means. In turn, these desires prompt them to invest more time in acquiring those means. So the freedom to consume comes at a price, which consists of the long hours of work required to be able to do the desired spending. Especially upper-middle-class people were at risk to become dissatisfied with their income levels. Juliet Schor formulated a logic behind the rising aspirations of consumers. An increasing inequality in income and wealth was highlighted by vastly rising levels of affluence among the top 20 percent of the income distribution, visible in ostentatious spending on luxury goods. The social group one compares oneself to and that informs one's consumer desires, changed from one's own, often socioeconomically homogeneous, neighborhood to better paid colleagues and enviable media personalities. These vertical rather than horizontal points of reference fueled consumer aspirations. Apart from booming consumer debts, working hours increased to fulfill the increased desires, a logic Schor called “the cycle of work and spend.”

Once trapped in the cycle of work and spend, it is difficult to get out. Elaborating the pioneering work by Gary S. Becker, “the acceleration of consumption” was further explained by Staffan B. Linder in terms of the increasing productivity of both work and leisure. People will choose an extra hour of leisure instead of an extra hour of paid work only if the value of the former exceeds the value of the latter. Therefore, an increase in the productivity of work, which also raises hourly wages, calls for an increase in productivity of leisure, to make it more rewarding and to keep the work-leisure balance in equilibrium. Leisure productivity is typically enhanced by investing more money per leisure hour in commodities such as media devices or cars, and in services such as tickets to the theater or a theme park, which allow for efficient and more or less guaranteed “quality time.” As productivity of both work and leisure increases, less time for idling remains, time itself becoming an increasingly scarce resource. So rising affluence has not led to more leisure time, as was believed would be the case half a century ago.

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