Why Can’t They Behave? Theorizing Consumer Misbehavior as Regime Misfit between Neoliberal and Nordic Welfare Models

The Nordic welfare model has enjoyed recent popularity among critics of free-market neoliberal social systems. The Nordic population has an idealized view of a Nordic hybrid market, which is well understood in the cultural context. However, the nuances of the model are lost on visitors who violate the spirit of the Nordic social contract, while not actually violating statutes and rules. Be they German families traveling in caravans or French backpackers setting up tents adjacent to Norwegian homes, these visitors are deemed to be misbehaving. Consumer misbehavior theorizing relies heavily on psychological or micro-level explanations. This chapter extends the literature with a macro-level exploration of consumer misbehavior. Relying on literature examining neoliberal and Nordic welfare state values, we argue that consumers who legitimize their motives and experiences in neoliberal regimes distinguished by market and industrial values fail to adopt a Nordic tourist-as-citizen role, distinguished also by domestic and civic values, and thereby misbehave in the context of the Nordic welfare regime. We introduce the concept of “regime misfit” and theorize how consumer misbehavior is unintentionally stimulated by tensions between values co-present in the marketplace.