There is a growing consensus in Ecological Economics that consumer preferences are neither fixed nor given, but rather endogenously determined by socio-economic and institutional factors. Hence, policy may promote green preferences directly. Yet any intervention in processes of preference...

This paper presents a formal model in which differential satiation dynamics of various consumer needs translate into long-run changes of consumer behavior when income rises. In the model individuals allocate their income to the consumption categories proportional to need deprivation states...

This paper shows how sustainable consumption patterns can spread within a population via processes of social learning even though a strong individual learning bias may favor environmentally harmful products. We present a model depicting how the biased transmission of different behaviors via...

A characteristic feature of economic development is the ever changing structure of consumption patterns. Reducing the explanation of this phenomenon to changing prices, finally caused by changes in the availability of goods (or characteristics), would neglect a major force driving this change,...

This paper incorporates aspects of humans' evolved cognition into a formal model of cultural evolution and scrutinizes their interactions with population-level processes. It is shown how the biased transmission of different kinds of behavior via cultural learning processes influences agents'...

This paper presents the computational model of consumer behaviour. We consider two sources of product specific consumer skill acquisition, termed here as learning how to consume: learning by consuming and consumer socialization. Consumers utilize these two sources in order to derive higher...

The paper contributes to the literature on the relation between structural changes in demand and supply and growth. We develop a macro-economic model with agent-based micro-foundations that articulates the links between production and organisational structures on the supply side, and the...

Interdependencies in consumer behavior stem from either status-seeking consumption or compliance with social norms. This paper analyzes how a consumption act changes from a means to signal the consumer's status to a means of norm compliance. It is shown that such a transformation can only be...

This paper posits that significant changes in 19th century British recreational travel patterns resulted from a change in the manner in which tourists used entertaining stimuli in order to attain pleasure. Consumers no longer merely viewed arousing stimuli, but attempted to use them to produce...

In order to explain the growth of obesity in industrialized and transition economies, a behavioral approach to food intake and overconsumption of calories is presented. It is argued that changes in food consumption patterns are one of the main drivers behind the imbalance of calories consumed...