[雙語翻譯]外文翻譯--消費信貸、家庭財務管理和可持續(xù)消費

1、5700 英文單詞， 英文單詞，3.3 萬英文字符，中文 萬英文字符，中文 9900 字文獻出處： 文獻出處：Cohen M J. Consumer credit, household financial management, and sustainable consumption[J]. International Journal of Consumer Studies, 2007, 31(1): 57-65.Consumer cr

2、edit, household financial management, and sustainable consumptionMaurie J. CohenAbstractOver the past decade, sustainable consumption has emerged as an issue of growing international prominence. Policy initiatives to fac

3、ilitate more environmentally and socially preferable household provisioning have typically emphasized materials and energy efficiency. While this approach holds the prospect for some notable short-term gains, experience

4、suggests that longer-term improvements are likely to fall short of expectations and trigger unanticipated rebound effects. Effective policy programs need to acknowledge the social and financial dimensions of consumer dec

5、ision making and become more attentive to the role of households as catalysts of production. From this perspective, consumer payment systems take on special significance. In particular, the prevalence of credit cards and

6、 the accumulation of consumer debt in the USA and other advanced countries have been important drivers of economic growth in recent years. This paper highlights the linkages between consumer credit and sustainable consum

7、ption and discusses the structural changes in lending practices that account for the popularity of this payment system. While unsatisfactory conceptual models and inadequate data make it difficult to advance any definiti

8、ve assessment of this relationship, it is possible to outline the basic elements of a research agenda in this area.Keywords: Credit cards, consumer payment systems, household finance, LOHAS, lifestyles of health and sust

9、ainability, revolving debt.IntroductionThe administrative procedures that have evolved over the past several decades in most developed countries to maintain environmental quality are largely organized around managing the

10、 adverse consequences of production. Broadly speaking, this approach has entailed the creation of elaborate social and technical systems to control pollution and to ensure that manufacturers conduct their operations in a

11、ccordance with proscribed performance standards. Policy makers’ preoccupation with producers as the main agents of hazardous environmental outcomes has led to the design of regulatory structures that impose extensive req

12、uirements on firms while simultaneously disregarding the reciprocal role of consumers.Given that end-user consumer demand is the ultimate driver of economic activity, and that retail transactions account for at least hal

13、f of all exchange in advanced nations (two-thirds in the USA), this fixation with production appears to be a curious anachronism. To encourage greater balance between the environmental obligations of producers and consum

14、ers, several international organizations and national governments have since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit sought to reconceptualize prominent environmental issues from a consumption perspective (see, e.g. IOCU, 1993; OECD,

15、1997, 1998; Stern et al., 1997). While the visibility of sustainable consumption as a policy issue has increased during this period, the prominence of consumer sovereignty within contemporary conceptions of governance ha

16、s slowed its political uptake.country (or other political entity). Though its origins trace back to the early 1980s, this idea gained considerable acclaim later in the decade when the Dutch affiliate of the environmental

17、 pressure group, Friends of the Earth, formally developed it as a policy concept (Buitenkamp et al., 1992/1993; McLaren, 1996; Moffatt, 1996; Bührs, 2004). This work also entailed a series of detailed calculations t

18、o demonstrate the disproportionate appropriation of global resources by a handful of affluent nations. It was alleged, for example, that during the early 1990s, just seven countries (with less than 12% of the world’s pop

19、ulation), consumed 59% of international aluminum production and 43% of the crude steel (Carley and Spapens, 1998). Moreover, the high incidence of automobile use in a relatively small number of prosperous countries impos

20、es an especially heavy burden on the global environment in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and fragmented ecosystems. In short, adherents of the concept of environmental space asserted that wealthy nations needed to su

21、bstantially modify their consumption practices to ‘free up’ a fair share of planetary carrying capacity to enable developing countries to realize their aspirations.Over time, these noble commitments have faded into the b

22、ackground – even among the northern European countries that have cautiously endorsed initiatives to encourage more sustainable consumption. Because the acquisition of consumer goods enjoys a seemingly unassailable positi

23、on in contemporary politics, projects to reduce the environmental impacts of household provisioning have been operationalized in highly pragmatic term (see, e.g. Hirschl et al., 2003; Thomas and Graedel, 2003). To this e

24、nd, the emphasis has been on ‘consuming more efficiently’ as opposed to ‘consuming less’ or ‘consuming differently.’ This approach to sustainable consumption mirrors the more general winnowing that has taken place with r

25、espect to the parent concept of sustainable development (more commonly advanced today as sustainability). While proponents have described sustainable development as a tripartite process engendering a careful balance amon

26、g environmental, economic, and social equity goals, it has proven in practice very difficult to maintain this multi-objective focus (Lafferty and Meadowcroft, 2000; Dresner, 2002). As both a political aspiration and a mo

27、de of planning practice, sustainable development is chiefly invoked as a way to pursue environmental improvements that do not challenge conventional economic prerogatives.Spaargaren (2000) has aptly termed this approach

28、the ‘ecological modernization of consumption’ – a label meant to equate the drive for efficiency gains in household technologies with more prevalent parallel efforts to correct environmental flaws on the production side

29、(Hajer, 1995; Mol, 1995; Cohen, 1997). This preceding commitment to more effective modes of manufacturing has been advanced within such nascent fields as industrial ecology, ecological design, and green chemistry. For th

30、ese engineering and scientific pursuits, sustainable consumption is taken to mean that goods producers should focus on developing a new generation of processes and products that meet considerably higher performance stand

31、ards. This particular understanding has contributed to current efforts to build more energy efficient consumer appliances, to ‘servicize’ certain consumer needs through the design of so-called product–service systems, an

32、d to dematerialize (and in some cases miniaturize) a range of household goods (see, e.g. Mont and Lindhqvist, 2003; Stoughton and Votta, 2003; Michelini and Razzoli, 2004). Once again, consumers are envisaged as playing

33、relatively passive roles as agents of environmental improvement and need only be enlisted as dutiful purchasers and users of these updated devices and services.Viewed from a slightly different angle, policy makers pursui