Environmentalism as a Form of Political Consumerism in Russia

Political consumerism implies that through the implementation of everyday actions in the form of purchases and boycotts of goods, people can express their political position and contribute to changes in society. In this study, environmentalism will be studied as one of the directions of political consumerism. The goal of this thesis is to understand how environmentalism fits into the concept of political consumerism and whether political consumerism can be considered a full-fledged form of political participation, in particular in the form of environmentalism. In addition, this study is aimed at studying the case of Russia, therefore, the motivation of Russian citizens to be involved in the process of political consumerism with environmental motives, as well as possible limitations of this process, will be investigated. In the framework of the study, the following hypotheses were formulated: 1) General dissatisfaction with the current state of environmental politics in Russia is an important factor motivating political consumerism. 2) Distrust of the government's actions to protect the environment contributes to the process of involving Russian citizens in the process of political consumerism. 3) The choice in favor of eco-friendly products may be difficult, since Russian consumers are not satisfied with their price, availability, diversity and amount of information. 4) Russian citizens involved in the process of ecological consumerism should demonstrate an interest in politics. 5) Russian citizens involved in the process of ecological consumerism should demonstrate indifference to the concept of civic duty. All hypotheses have been confirmed (and only the fourth is confirmed to a lesser extent compared to the others).