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Oksana Mont

Oksana Mont

Professor

Oksana Mont

A Map Is Not a Territory: Making Research More Helpful for Sustainable Consumption Policy

Author

  • Eva Heiskanen
  • Oksana Mont
  • K. Power

Summary, in English

The need to make consumption patterns more sustainable is widely acknowledged, yet effective policies for sustainable consumption are lacking. This article examines Nordic policy makers' views on why sustainable consumption research is difficult to apply in policy practice. We draw on the knowledge brokering literature to outline how the challenges of knowledge utilization in policy are connected to knowledge communication practices and to the types and scales of policy problems. Our empirical material is based on in-depth interviews with Nordic civil servants working with sustainable consumption issues. Our findings identify problems in sustainable consumption policy that are well documented in other fields, such as policy makers' lack of time and the inconclusiveness of research findings. However, we also identify more fundamental problems, which relate to administrative fragmentation and to the status of social science in policy making, as well as to the linear model of knowledge use in policy making in which administrators are forced to serve as knowledge brokers between researchers and policy makers. Our research suggests that better forms of knowledge dissemination are not sufficient to overcome these problems. New forms of knowledge co-production are needed, in which researchers, administrators, politicians, and other stakeholders work together to solve real-life problems and build up a shared knowledge community. We conclude by highlighting the implications for researchers aiming to promote change toward more sustainable consumption patterns. © 2013 Springer Science+Business Media New York.

Department/s

  • The International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics

Publishing year

2013

Language

English

Pages

1-18

Publication/Series

Journal of Consumer Policy

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Springer

Topic

  • Social Sciences Interdisciplinary

Keywords

  • Knowledge brokering
  • Policy
  • Research
  • Sustainable consumption

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0168-7034