Share of people willing to avoid over-consumption in France 2020

While in 1970, the French sociologist Jean Baudrillard evoked a "fantastic conspicuousness of consumption and abundance" in his book The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, the current environmental fears seem to have led to a certain mutation of our contemporary consumption behaviors. In 2019, the environment was indeed one of the main concerns of the French, and the following year, almost all of them reported avoiding or wanting to avoid over-consumption.

Changes in our relationships to products?

The feeling that previously tended to make over-consumption an element of modernity seems to have been altered. Our relationship to objects has changed, and in recent years many of the French have become accustomed to controlling and tempering their consumption. Second-hand purchases have gradually been democratized, and opportunities are available for many categories of items: whether clothing, furniture, high-tech items, or even toys, the French taste for second-hand seems to have strengthened.
Regarding other responsible consumption practices, an increasing number of French people favor local products or manufacture their owns, such as beauty and cleaning products. The taste for reusable items also seems to be prevailing over disposable products: a relatively high proportion of people were using, or expressing the desire to use, reusable cotton swabs, make-up removers or menstrual protections in 2020, and nearly a quarter of them had already purchased an upcycled product.

Influences of COVID-19 and containment on consumption patterns

To some extent, the current health crisis seems to have reinforced the popularity of these practices and behaviors. In April 2020, most of the French population considered that this crisis was proof of the need to change our consumption habits in order to adopt more responsible ones. In fact, the majority of them expressed their intention to buy more environmentally friendly products after the containment, and even to favor those that are. Moreover, 85 percent of the people surveyed in 2020 believed that the Coronavirus (COVID-19) induced lockdown had increased the visibility of the positive effects of consuming products from local and short-distance channels on the environment.
Thus, rather than representing a real break with the logic of consumption, the experience of the crisis could lead to a change in behavior towards a more moderate form of materialism, which would be more sustainable in the long term.