Abstract: Unprecedented widespread serious smog, which has occurred for recent years in China, has had severe impact on almost every aspect of social lives. This study makes effort to find detail conditions of the influence on residents’ daily consumption activities, and their differences among different classes. The assumption is that, as a kind of external constraint, the smog causes temporal-spatial variations of residents’ daily consumption activities, as well as the differentiation among social groups, when it encounters individual initiatives in different socio- economic contexts. Following the interpretivism approach of situation analysis, this study conducts surveys and interviews with residents of different class, who are living in a special inner city section of Nanjing, namely the old Southern City, where lower, middle and higher classes neighborhoods are located adjacently, and which is near to diversity consumption places. This study finds that, under the influence of smog, there are different temporal-spatial changes of consumption activity among different consumption types, as well as different classes. Furthermore, when it is smoggy, there are different consumption behavior and activities due to different ability to break through the constraints. The different ability to break the constraints is mainly caused by the differences in economic conditions and social networks. The lower class usually has very poor capacity in struggling against bad weather, and they always make passive compromises, while the middle and higher classes can proactively respond to the smog hazard. This study further highlights that the daily-life spatial segregation among different classes is intensified, when negative environmental constraints, such as bad weather conditions, are adding to existing segregated social economic isolation. According to the research results, some suggestions are put forward as follows: 1) adopting life style-oriented spatial policy; 2) improving the convenient level of connection between public transportation and the daily consumption spaces; 3) giving lower class residents’ daily life more social concern and policy support.

Key words: smog, consumption behavior, class, temporal-spatial change, constraint analysis