Social experiments in sustainable consumption: an evidence-based approach with potential for engaging low-income communities

This paper considers the potential of Global Action Plan UK's (GAP) facilitated team-based approach to changing consumption practices for working with low-income communities. It outlines the two dominant approaches for encouraging sustainable consumption in UK policy: attitude–behaviour connection models (A–Bc) and consumer motivation theories. It then contrasts these with GAP's group-based approach and presents quantitative evidence for its effectiveness in reducing waste and electricity consumption. We suggest that three features of GAP's approach (i) measurement and feedback, (ii) contextualised knowledge production, and (iii) a supportive social context are critical to its success because they enable individuals to expose their taken-for-granted routines and behaviours to reflexive scrutiny in a trusted community. We argue that these factors make GAP's approach sensitive to the needs of low-income communities, but that such innovative social experiments require more support to build on their experiences, expand in size, and maintain a focus on both sustainable consumption and inequality.

[1]  Kirstem Gram-Hanssen.  Domestic electricity consumption - consumers and appliances , 2004 .

[2]  Jacquelin Burgess,et al.  Un)sustainable consumption , 2003 .

[3]  Stewart Barr,et al.  Strategies for sustainability: citizens and responsible environmental behaviour , 2003 .

[4]  S. Ungar.  Apples and oranges: Probing the attitude-behaviour relationship for the environment , 2008 .

[5]  R. Belk,et al.  The Fire of Desire: A Multisited Inquiry into Consumer Passion , 2003 .

[6]  James Blake.  Overcoming the ‘value‐action gap’ in environmental policy: Tensions between national policy and local experience , 1999 .

[7]  K. Hobson.  Thinking Habits into Action: The role of knowledge and process in questioning household consumption practices , 2003 .

[8]  I. Ajzen.  The theory of planned behavior , 1991 .

[9]  R. Chambers.  Whose reality counts? Putting the last first , 1997 .

[10]  S. Stagl,et al.  Beyond insatiability – needs theory, consumption and sustainability , 2004 .

[11]  Stephen Kaplan,et al.  New Ways to Promote Proenvironmental Behavior: Human Nature and Environmentally Responsible Behavior , 2000 .

[12]  D. McKenzie‐Mohr,et al.  Promoting Sustainable Behavior : An Introduction to Community-Based Social Marketing , 2000 .

[13]  E. Shove.  Comfort, Cleanliness and Convenience: The Social Organization of Normality , 2003 .

[14]  A. Maslow.  Motivation and Personality , 1954 .

[15]  E. Dowler,et al.  Poverty Bites: Food, Health and Poor Families , 2001 .

[16]  P. Stern.  New Environmental Theories: Toward a Coherent Theory of Environmentally Significant Behavior , 2000 .

[17]  I. Ajzen,et al.  Belief, Attitude, Intention, and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research , 1977 .

[18]  Stephen Kaplan,et al.  Human nature and environmentally responsible behavior , 2000 .

[19]  Stefano Livi,et al.  Recycling: Planned and self-expressive behaviour , 2004 .

[20]  W. Poortinga,et al.  Values, Environmental Concern, and Environmental Behavior , 2004 .

[21]  John Thøgersen,et al.  A cognitive dissonance interpretation of consistencies and inconsistencies in environmentally responsible behavior , 2004 .

[22]  A. Owen,et al.  The use of personalised social marketing to foster voluntary behavioural change for sustainable travel and lifestyles , 2008 .

[23]  R. Dunlap,et al.  The “New Environmental Paradigm” , 1978 .

[24]  J. Agyeman,et al.  'Just sustainability': the emerging discourse of environmental justice in Britain? , 2004 .

[25]  H. Staats,et al.  Effecting Durable Change , 2004 .

[26]  S. Eden,et al.  Individual Environmental Responsibility and its Role in Public Environmentalism , 1993 .

[27]  M. Douglas,et al.  Pour une anthropologie de la consommation : le monde des biens; The world of goods : towards an anthropology of consumption , 2008 .

[28]  J. Burgess,et al.  Environmental Communication and the Cultural Politics of Environmental Citizenship , 1998 .

[29]  S. Bamberg.  How does environmental concern influence specific environmentally related behaviors? A new answer to an old question , 2003 .

[30]  Joanne Vining,et al.  Predicting Recycling Behavior from Global and Specific Environmental Attitudes and Changes in Recycling Opportunities1 , 1992 .

[31]  Susse Georg.  The Social Shaping of Household Consumption , 1999 .

[32]  Jacquelin Burgess,et al.  Rationalizing environmental responsibilities: A comparison of lay publics in the UK and the Netherlands , 1996 .

[33]  R. Burt.  The Social Capital of Opinion Leaders , 1999 .

[34]  Community, reflexivity and sustainable consumption , 2004 .

[35]  M. Douglas,et al.  The World of Goods , 2021 .

[36]  C. Knussen,et al.  An analysis of intentions to recycle household waste: The roles of past behaviour, perceived habit, and perceived lack of facilities , 2004 .

[37]  Manfred A. Max-Neef.  Human Scale Development: Conception, Application and Further Reflections , 1989 .

[38]  R. D. Young,et al.  Changing Behavior and Making it Stick The Conceptualization and Management of Conservation Behavior , 1993 .

[39]  Lawrence J. Axelrod,et al.  Responding to environmental concerns: What factors guide individual action? , 1993 .

[40]  Frans Berkhout,et al.  Negotiating Environmental Change: New Perspectives from Social Science , 2003 .

[41]  Tim Jackson,et al.  Consumption, sustainable welfare and human needs--with reference to UK expenditure patterns between 1954 and 1994 , 1999 .

[42]  Kersty Hobson,et al.  Competing Discourses of Sustainable Consumption: Does the 'Rationalisation of Lifestyles' Make Sense? , 2002 .

[43]  M. Nye,et al.  Promoting durable change in household waste and energy use behaviour , 2008 .

[44]  R. Burt.  Social Contagion and Innovation: Cohesion versus Structural Equivalence , 1987, American Journal of Sociology.

[45]  Raymond De Young,et al.  New Ways to Promote Proenvironmental Behavior: Expanding and Evaluating Motives for Environmentally Responsible Behavior , 2000 .

[46]  I. Røpke,et al.  The Ecological Economics of Consumption , 2004 .

[47]  M. P. Maloney,et al.  Ecology: Let's hear from the people: An objective scale for the measurement of ecological attitudes and knowledge. , 1973 .

[48]  S Housham,et al.  Painting the Town Green - How to persuade people to be environmentally friendly , 2005 .

[49]  L. Festinger,et al.  A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance , 2017 .

[50]  R. Dunlap,et al.  THE NEW ENVIRONMENTAL PARADIGM: 5 PROPOSED MEASURING INSTRUMENT AND PRELIMINARY RESULTS , 1978 .

[51]  S. Hinchliffe,et al.  Helping the earth begins at home The social construction of socio-environmental responsibilities , 1996 .

[52]  Raymond De Young,et al.  Some Psychological Aspects of RecyclingThe Structure of Conservation - Satisfactions , 1986 .

[53]  G. R. Brundtland.  Our Common Future World Commission on Environment and Development , 1987 .