The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies

Downshifting

JÖRGEN LARSSON

Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

DOI: 10.1002/9781118989463.wbeccs102

The concept of downshifting spread in the United States during the 1990s, starting with Amy Saltzman's book Down-Shifting: Reinventing Success on a Slower Track (1991). The main idea is to focus less on paid work and to cut out unnecessary expenditures, in order to have time to do more of the things one wants to do. Ideas about an ascetic or simple life are well known in most major religions, as well as in literature. One example is Henry David Thoreau's Walden (1855), which describes a simple life in the forest far removed from urban stress, and which is still popular today. Downshifting is a form of voluntary simplicity – a term which was introduced in the 1930s by one of Mahatma Gandhi's followers and which became widespread after Duane Elgin used it in the title of his 1981 book, Voluntary Simplicity: Toward a Way of Life That Is Outwardly Simple, Inwardly Rich.

Shaw and Newholm (2002) make a distinction between two types of voluntary simplifiers: downshifters and ethical simplifiers. Downshifters are motivated mainly by self-centered reasons, usually the aim to improve their quality of life. Ethical simplifiers are motivated mainly by environmental and/or social concerns. A quite different group are the involuntary simplifiers, a category which has also become more common in many OECD countries as a result of financial crises.

Downshifting can be defined as a long-term ...