Prosuming Alone or Together: A Bisectoral Approach to Conceptualizing the Commons Prosumer

Abstract

The aim of this study was to combine the concept of prosumerism with the theory of the commons to develop the concept of commons prosumer (co-prosumer) in distinction to private prosumer (p-prosumer). While the p-prosumer prosumes for himself, the co-prosumer creates a social environment for social capital. We use energy and agriculture as two cases in point to illustrate that the concept of the prosumer‘s role appears in different contexts with varying attributes such as self-efficacy, sufficiency, or autarchy. However, independence and socially fragmented structures might lead to less resilience, whereas dependence structures could confer collective benefits. We propose a building block to fill the gap in the prosumer setting and balance individual and collective interests. By positioning the p-prosumer on a commons-based foundation, we make more explicit the dependence structures that build communities or networks to showcase possibilities that pave the way for shared and socially innovative structures of self-empowerment for infrastructure decision-making at different levels.