Subsistence and Sustainability: From Micro-Level Behavioral Insights to
Macro-Level Implications on Consumption, Conservation, and the Environment The main goal of this article is to develop micro-level behavioral insights at the intersection of poverty and the environment and derive macro-marketing implications. The behavior aspect includes psychological and socio-cultural aspects and emphasizes consumption and conservation. The findings of the article emphasize the importance of different levels of spatial and psychological distance, as well as coping strategies for communities to sustain themselves. The introduction and literature review is broken down into two main parts: poverty and micro-level behavior, and poverty and the environment. Research on subsistence marketplaces has adopted the bottom up behavioral perspective for micro-level. This research has examined underlying variables that affect how the poor interact with marketplaces, specifically focusing on behavior such as thinking styles, emotional factors, and social relationships. It found that individuals are concrete in their thinking in the following ways. Individuals who subsist use information at a tangible level rather than interpreting or combining it to reach more abstract conclusions. Second, individuals focus on the “what” and “how” rather than the “why” in abstract realms. This suggests a focus on the immediate in terms of environmental issues. Another tendency is pictographic thinking, which is reflecting a comfort level with what is perceived rather than acquired. Another important finding from the research is how big of an emotional toll poverty takes on an individual and how self-esteem is greatly affected, especially in how important it is in marketplace encounters. Self esteem is dependent on how an individual thinks as well as how a person feels. The literature is summarized