The Effect of Scarcity Thinking on Human Wants among Muslims: Exploring the Ideological Orientation of the Concept of Scarcity

Mainstream economics postulates the concept of scarcity as a defining notion, while heterodox economics denies the proposition of scarcity. In contrast, there is no clear stand among Islamic economists towards the concept of scarcity. This paper explores the concept of scarcity ideologically and examines empirically the effect of scarcity thinking on human wants. The concept of scarcity is one of the unresolved issues in Islamic economics. Conceptually, this paper aims to explore and uncover the ideological basis of the concept of scarcity in the writings of Malthus and Robbins with reference to the Islamic perspective. In so doing, analysis of texts was performed. In contrast to positivism, which relies on sensible observation, this paper attempts to analyze the concept of scarcity and abundance from the perspectives of critical realism. Critical realism goes beyond the Seen phenomena to include elements from the Un-Seen reality. Empirically, this paper attempts to explore the effect of scarcity thinking on human wants among Muslims. With reference to social psychology and specifically to commodity theory, scarcity enhances desires in people. Consequently, this paper attempts to abstract scarcity thinking out of the concept of scarcity that defines mainstream economics. Scarcity thinking means that there is not enough for everyone to go around. In doing so, this paper has constructed a measurement strategy around Scarcity Thinking, Human Wants and Islamic Religiosity. The quantitative data used for this empirical research was collected through a questionnaire administered on 345 Muslim individuals working within the Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. A measurement and structural model were formulated through adopting the structural equation modeling approach (using AMOS version 18). This paper concluded that Scarcity Thinking enhances Human Wants significantly and has the opposite relationship to Islamic Religiosity. One major implication of this paper is that the concept of scarcity of mainstream economics reflects scarcity thinking in which Scarcity thinking is causing a dissonance between Islamic Religiosity of moderation in expenditure and excessive buying behavior of Human Wants. Therefore, the concept of scarcity and its thinking state inflates human wants and contradicts the Islamic worldview of cooperation and obedience.