CAN STATUS SEEKING BEHAVIOUR BE GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT?
CAN STATUS SEEKING BEHAVIOUR BE GOOD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT?

Summary/Abstract: Striving to improve social position via consumption generate resources exhaustion, as not all of us can enhance our social position. Status concern behaviour ought thus to be likely harmful to the environment. Nevertheless, numerous investigations show that status concern and growth are linked, and several investigations categorized as Environmental Kuznets curves, show that growth in fact ameliorates the environment. If status concern boosts growth it even may, in the long run, ameliorates the environment. How does status seeking behaviour influence the environment? We examine this question using an overlapping generations model including status and environmental externalities. It is shown that striving for status has both negative and positive impacts on environmental quality. Whether the positive impact dominates the negative one depends on the degrees of status seeking, environmental externalities and the size of the economy

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