Religious Identity and Consumption

Lanse Minkler () and Metin Cosgel ()

No 2004-03, Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics

Abstract: Consumption choices assist in solving the problem of how to convey and recognize religious identities. In the communication of an identity, individuals use the knowledge embedded in consumption norms, which restrict the range of choices to a smaller set and abbreviate the required knowledge for encoding and decoding messages. Using this knowledge as a shared framework for understanding, individuals with religious beliefs can choose consumption items that would not only strengthen their beliefs but also help them express the intensity of their commitments to these beliefs. Because individuals and societies have different beliefs, norms, commitments, and expressive needs, consumption choice can help to express these differences. Our explanation contrasts with incentive-based approaches that view religious consumption norms as solutions to free-rider problem inherent in clubs.

Pages: 18 pages
Date: 2004-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com and nep-evo
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (22)

Published in Review of Social Economy, 2004, 33(3): 329-341.

Downloads: (external link)
https://media.economics.uconn.edu/working/2004-03.pdf Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Religious Identity and Consumption (2004)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:uct:uconnp:2004-03

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working papers from University of Connecticut, Department of Economics University of Connecticut 365 Fairfield Way, Unit 1063 Storrs, CT 06269-1063. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Mark McConnel ().