Sustainable Consumption and Lifestyles

Head of Research Area: Oksana Mont

Understanding forces that shape consumption
IIIEE researchers addresses problems associated with current consumption patterns and levels by analysing formal and informal driving forces that shape everyday behavior of people, citizens and consumers, by investigating the role of the triangle of change – governments, businesses and civil society – in developing visions for, instigating, enabling, encouraging and supporting societal changes to sustainable lifestyles that rely on much more materially efficient systems of provision, products and services and on alternative systems of social and technological innovation.
Contact: Oksana Mont

The Role of Formal and Informal Forces in Shaping Consumption and Implications for a Sustainable Society. Part II

The role of retailers in creating sustainable markets
IIIEE researchers analyse how individual food retailers can contribute to creating more sustainable markets by:

Choosing which products they would like to sell in their shops. Retailers can either edit away products with high environmental and social impacts or increase the percentage of more sustainable products in their shops (choice editing);
Stimulating suppliers to develop and provide products that are better from environmental and social perspective;
Influencing and assisting customers with choosing more sustainable products by employing innovative information, disposition, labeling, and marketing strategies and tools. Directly in shops we are going to study how customers perceive provided information, whether it influences their purchasing decisions and how this knowledge can be used in the retailers’ work.

Contacts: Oksana Mont, Beatrice Kogg, Olga Chkanikova, Andrius Plepys

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Sustainable retail

Sustainable lifestyles
IIIEE researchers together with partners from 9 European countries aim to consolidate existing body of knowledge from research projects and experiences of stakeholder networks, comprising researchers, health and education experts, industry, services and civil society representatives. The project aims to create scenarios of sustainable lifestyles in 2050 through a social platform, focusing on sustainable living, moving, consuming and healthy life and by setting up a peoples’ forum and an online platform in order to host an ongoing dialogue open to public. By using the back-casting approach a roadmap with a timeline on how to achieve sustainable lifestyles will be developed. To support European policy makers in their work on sustainable lifestyles the project will develop a research agenda for the future.
Contact: Oksana Mont

Advancing sustainability in supply chains
IIIEE researchers analyse environmental and social problems that arise upstream the supply chain and investigate various strategies that might be employed for improving environmental and social profile of companies in supply chains by both companies and independent organisations and instruments, such as international standards and third-party certification bodies.
Contacts: Beatrice Kogg, Olga Chkanikova, Oksana Mont

The role of public perceptions in sustainable consumption policies
IIIEE researchers together with researchers from Copenhagen Resource Institute analyse how public perceptions change (and are changed) over time, and how they could facilitate shifts in both policy and the institutional settings of society to promote sustainable consumption and production.
Contact: Oksana Mont

Research on Sustainable Tourism
Over the last decades tourism has emerged as a very significant sector to address from a sustainability point of view. It is one of the fastest growing industries in the world, and it is the single most important sector in terms of employment worldwide. As for any other industry, this development comes with both positive and negative impacts. At its best tourism can contribute to economic development, protection of nature and cultural heritage, understanding between people and peace on earth. However, more commonly observed, tourism is an industry that exploits local people, including their natural and cultural assets, for short term profits. Consequently tourism may lead environmental and cultural degradation and social disruption to an extent that a destination looses its attraction and eventually its economic foundation. Thus tourism is an industrial activity that clearly demonstrates the strong interdependency between the three pillars of sustainability.

Presently IIIEE researchers are involved in the following three projects striving to make tourism more sustainab

FAST-LAIN (Further Action on Sustainable Tourism – Learning Area Innovation Networks), with an overall objective to strengthen the research potential on competitiveness and sustainability tourism-related issues on a European scale.
Photo Tourism. The development of an innovative edutainment concept for promotion of sustainable growth and increased competitiveness within European tourism.
The Ecolodge, with the aim to develop a strict definition terminology, including consequent principles and indicators, regarding a widely used and misused concept to market tourism accommodations.

Contact: Mikael Backman

Virtual Meetings
The government has mandated 18 state agencies to increase their use of virtual meetings in order to reduce the environmental impact of work-related travel. The authorities must also report the extent of their use of virtual meetings as well as the effects thereof to the Swedish EPA. The proposed research project aims to develop a framework for evaluating and monitoring the effects that these meetings may entail, including impact on travel, energy and environmental parameters, as well as economic, social and time use implications. Using this framework, the goal is to develop a credible and applicable routine for government agency reporting of virtual meetings, as well as methods for monitoring and analysis of the consequences of an increased use of these meetings.

Contact: Oksana Mont

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Last updated: 2012-04-24