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- Children and the Environment
- ELiCiT (Exploring lifestyle changes in transition)
- Foundations for Sustainable Living
- HABITs
- Mapping Rebound Effects
- PASSAGE (Prosperity and Sustainability in the Green Economy)
- Policy Dialogue
- Price Responsiveness of Demand in Energy
- Resilience and Sustainable Lifestyles
- Sustainability Transitions in Food Systems
- Sustainable Living in Remote Rural Scotland
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Projects
Over and above the research aims of the work programme, the SLRG is dedicated to building capacity for research in sustainable lifestyles amongst academics, young researchers, practitioners, and user communities. Above all SLRG aims to provide a vital resource for policy-makers attempting to influence the behaviours and practices of households, business and communities.
Our research portfolio comprises around a dozen projects within four main research clusters: Community, Economy, Change Processes and Synthesis.
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Community
Project Team: Rachael Durrant and Adrian Smith
A perceived crisis of un-sustainability in the food system has precipitated mounting calls for a transition to sustainability in the ways that food is produced, traded and consumed. This study concerns the strategic attempts made by UK-based civil society organisations (CSO’s) to transform food systems and make them more sustainable. ...Read more
Project Team: Rebecca White and Andy Stirling
This project aims to explore resilience in activities as promoted by food-related civil society groups who seek to develop more sustainable ways of producing and consuming food. It will focus specifically on communal gardening projects which provide fresh produce for those who participate. It is important to understand what enables Sustainable activities to develop resilience, and related properties such as stability, durability and robustness, in the face of shocks and stresses that those activities, or the organisations that support them, experience. ...Read more
Project Team: Emily Creamer, Simon Allen and Claire Haggett
This project seeks to narrow a gap in the sustainable lifestyles research - which is mostly concentrated on urban settings - by conducting ethnographic studies of three remote rural communities in Scotland, each currently undertaking projects to promote sustainable living locally. ...Read more
Economy
Project Team: Steve Sorrell, Angela Druckman, Mona Chitnis and Tim Jackson
Improved energy efficiency and behavioural change are expected to play a key role in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, the energy and GHG savings from such measures may be less than simple calculations suggest, owing to a variety of mechanisms that go under the heading of rebound effects. This project seeks to improve understanding of the nature, magnitude and importance of these rebound effects for UK households. ...Read more
Project Team: Andrew Leicester and George Stoye
This project explored the influence of price on people’s decision-making in relation to energy-related behaviours in household energy consumption ...Read more
Project Team: Laura Blow
This project had three main aims: to identify quantitatively from household purchase data the distribution of willingness-to-pay for a range of food characteristics (organic, freerange, fairtrade, country- of-origin) amongst the UK household population; to study the empirical relationship between these preferences and demographics in the UK household population; and to study the relationship between these preferences and responses to attitudinal questions regarding various shopping habits, including preferences for buying local or environmentally friendly products ...Read more
Change Processes
Project Team: Kate Burningham, Linda Geßner, Bronwyn Hayward, Tim Jackson, Sylvia Nissen, Sue Venn
The aim of this scoping project is to develop a longitudinal study on the relationship between children and the environment and to explore media opportunities to bring this relationship into the public eye. ...Read more
Project Team: Kate Burningham, Sue Venn,Tim Jackson, Ian Christie and Birgitta Gatersleben
This study aims to provide an in-depth exploration of a range of issues relating to the way in which people’s lifestyles may become more or less sustainable at points of transition, specifically those having a first child and those retiring. ...Read more
Project Team: Bas Verplanken and Debbie Roy
This study will be a systematic test of the habit discontinuity hypothesis. The core concept being tested is whether context change (moving home) can provide an opportunity to influence existing unsustainable behaviours and result in the adoption of new pro-environmental activities. ...Read more
Synthesis
Project Team: Tim Jackson and the SLRG team
The Foundations Project aims to synthesis a coherent framework for sustainable living. It will be essentially a common intellectual endeavour, facilitated and led by Professor Jackson, with input from across the research group. ...Read more
Project Team: Ian Christie, Julie Barnett and Tim Jackson
Policy goals around sustainable behaviours are nebulous and contested. The realities of the policy making process include severe time pressures, limited resources, changing ministers and ministerial priorities (Bielak et al., 2008). ...Read more
