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TRANSITIONS IN PRACTICEclimate change and everyday lifeElizabeth Shove, Lancaster UniversityESRC climate change leadership fellowship

Beyond the ABC how social science can help climate change policy

TRANSITIONS IN PRACTICEclimate change and everyday lifeElizabeth Shove, Lancaster UniversityESRC climate change leadership fellowship

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Including social theories of consumption, material culture, technology studies, cultural theory, theories of practice, histories of socio-technical change, transitions, innovation studies….

Reservoir of resources in social theory

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the ABC of sustainable consumption

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AIndividuals have attitudes

Attitudes towards consumption, waste and responsibility need changing

Attitudes are changed by persuasion and information.

Attitudes drive behaviour

BBehaviour is what individuals do.

Behaviours need changing.

Behaviours are driven by attitudes and prices.

People choose how to behave

If individuals chose to use less energy, water and other resources we’d not be in the fix we are

Policy makers need to encourage individuals to make different choicesC

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Kick the CO2 habit (United Nations Environment Programme 2008)

Creatures of Habit: the Art of Behavioural Change (Prendergast 2008)

I Will if You Will (Sustainable Consumption Round Table 2006)

Changing behaviour through policy making (DEFRA 2005)

Motivating Sustainable Consumption (Jackson 2005)

Driving public behaviours for sustainable lifestyles (Darnton 2004)

Behavioural psychology and economics dominate climate change policy

DEFRA, A framework for pro-environmental behaviours (2008)

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Chosen behaviour

Driving factors

Attraction No. 1: emphasise consumer choice

Other Chosen behaviour

Change driving factors

Drivers include

Attitudes

Society

Economics

Other people

Habit

Externalise pretty much anything, including the role of government and policy

levers

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DEFRA, 2008 Framework for Pro-Environmental Behaviours

The headline behaviour goalsInstall insulation -Better energy management -Install microgeneration-Increase recycling -Waste less (food)-More responsible water usage-Use more efficient vehicles -Use car less for short trips -Avoid unnecessary flights (short haul)-Buy energy efficient products-Eat more food that is locally in season -Adopt lower impact diet

Social marketing of green consumptionAvoiding regulationAssume choiceFocus on efficiency, not demand

Assume a ‘green’ orientation to a huge range of different practices

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High ability and willing

Low potential and unwilling

Segment willingness and ability

Ability to act High

Low

High

Willing to Act

Low

5: Cautious participants I do a couple of things to help the environment. I’d really like to do

more, well as long as I saw others were.14%

2: Waste watchers‘Waste not, want not’ that’s important, you should live life thinking about what

you are doing and using.12%

1: Positive greensI think it’s important that I do as

much as I can to limit my impact on the environment.

18%3: Concerned consumers

I think I do more than a lot of people. Still, going away is important, I’d find

that hard to give up..well I wouldn’t, so carbon off-setting would make me feel

better.14%

4: Sideline supportersI think climate change is a big problem for us. I know I don’t think much about how much water or electricity I use, and I forget to turn things off..I’d like to do a

bit more.14%

7: Honestly disengaged

Maybe there’ll be an environmental disaster, maybe not. Makes no

difference to me, I’m just living life the way I want to.

18%

6: Stalled startersI don’t know much about climate

change. I can’t afford a car so I use public transport.. I’d like a car

though.10%

Attraction No. 2: segments inform targets

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• Demographic Change (fixed)

• CustomerThe demanding customer will expect to be able to use as much

water as they wish and can afford.– Not susceptible to water efficiency messages– Also likely to expect very high standards of service

The accepting customer will be prepared to use water more sparingly for the greater good.

– Will accept current standards of service.

Social

Demographic Change Customer

Demanding Accepting

Environmental, economic and social drivers of the future; of which the social is defined like this: Mouchel for UKWIR

Attraction No. 3: consumers as factors in systems that can be modeled.

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Universality of behaviourPermits comparisons and lessons from smoking to building design; from eating to driving; from laundering to gardening; from one country to another

Uniformity of levers and drivers - human nature; together with market segments.

And a logical explanation for intervention

1.Attitudes are this

2.Opportunities are that

3.Barriers are the following

4.If obstacles are overcome, behaviours are likely to change

Attraction No. 4: provides an ‘evidence’ based approach

Depending on what you count as evidence!

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• Assume levers, and if they don’t work, assume barriers. • Assume choice, and if it doesn’t

transpire, assume habit. • Assume drivers, - the detail doesn’t

matter• Assume that attitudes are drivers, so

collect and use evidence on attitudes

Attraction No. 5: the ABC deals with everything

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Twelve Steps to Help You Kick the CO2 Habit

“The day's agenda is to give a human face to environmental issues; empower people to become active agents of sustainable and equitable development”

…. Or, “The day’s agenda is to position C02 as an matter of personal addiction, thereby denying the social formation of habit, or any wider politics of consumption, production and demand”

Attraction No. 6: allocates responsibility

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Dominant social theory and policy

Individual attitudes, behaviour, choice price and persuasion

Social theories of practice and transition but what link to policy?

Dynamic regimes of everyday life;

changing definitions of normal practice generate changing patterns of demand for energy, water, and other resources.

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A practice is social .. it is a ‘type’ of behaving and understanding that appears at different locales and at different points of time and is carried out by different body/minds. (Reckwitz 2000: 250)

Practices involve the active integration of materials, images and competence.

Practices are coherent entities that require performance for their existence: performances are generative and transformative.

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A practice “consists of several elements, interconnected to one other: forms of

bodily activities, forms of mental activities, ‘things’ and their use, a

background knowledge in the form of understanding, know-how, states

of emotion and motivational knowledge.” (Reckwitz 2002: 249).

Consumption occurs as items are appropriated in the course of engaging in particular practices ( Warde 2005, p131.)

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running hot water; bathrooms; ideas of body and hygiene, freshness, knowing how to operate shower and get the temperature right.

A bicycle, a road, an ability to balance,

and the sense that this is a normal and not a crazy thing to do.

Flour, sugar, eggs and milk, an idea of home baking, competence to combine and cook ingredients

For example

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Links are made and broken between practices

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Theories of practice

Shared, social

Endogenous dynamics

Specific cultural and material histories

Reproductive, generative

Theories of behaviour

Individual choice

External drivers

Common base in belief

Causal

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“energy demand for air conditioning increases rapidly in the 21st century. The increase is from close to 300 TWh in 2000, to about 4000 TWh in 2050 and more than 10,000 TWh in 2100”

Isaac, M. and van Vuuren, D. (2009), “Modeling global residential sector energy demand for heating and air conditioning in the context of climate change, Energy Policy 37,507–521

Sivak, M. (2009), Potential energy demand for cooling in the 50 largest metropolitan areas of the world : Implications for developing countries, Energy Policy, 37, 1382–1384

the potential cooling demand in metropolitan Mumbai is about 24% of the demand for the entire United States.

“using energy to keep cool in hot ambient temperatures on a large scale is a relatively new development.”

Global cooling

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How did the practice of heating and cooling to around 22 degrees C become normal?

what climate to provide?

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Standardising comfort, sweat and smell: the clo and the olf

The standard amount of insulation required to keep a resting person warm in a windless room at 70 °F (21.1°C) is equal to one Clo.

Units were chosen so that 1 clo would be roughly the insulating value afforded by a man’s underwear and a lightweight suit, or “a heavy top coat alone.”

The Olf is a unit used to measure the scent emission of people and objects.

One olf is defined as the scent emission of an "average person", a sitting adult that takes an average of 0.7 baths per day and whose skin has a total area of 1.8 square metres; the scent emission of an object or person is measured by trained personnel comparing it to normed scents.

Standardising science reproduces a specific set of cultural conventions: this matters for ventilation rates and energy consumption.

Professor Fanger in his "Doctor-dress" at a reception at DTU, June 2001

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Air conditioning as normal

Disappearing systems: sweat, clothing, siesta

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Configuring refrigerated regimes

USA: post war house building, 1950s onwards

Japan: symbol of westernisation, 1980s

Australia: retrofitting existing stock, 2000

Diversity between and within countries

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Configuration 1. In which maintaining 21-22 degrees C. indoors is novel

Configuration 2. In which maintaining 21-22 degrees C. indoors has become normal

time

Air conditioning as normal

Technology already established: enters existing regimes, ready-made

JapanIndia

Australia

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Behaviour oriented

Why don’t people turn the heating/cooling down at night?

Why don’t they install more efficient technologies?

Why don’t they install more insulation?

Promote efficiency and ‘retain current standards’

Scale of impact: inherently limited

Practice oriented

How do concepts of comfort come to be as they are?

How are systems of practice sustained?

How might these be reconfigured?

Intervention in the reproduction of everyday practice (18-28 degrees C, rather than 22)

Scale of impact: potentially massive

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Opportunities for practice oriented policyTo stem the adoption and/or use of air conditioning

Why 22 degrees C., where did that idea come from, what assumptions does it carry with it.

Why wear a suit when it is hot outside?

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This year, the MOE aims to expand the movement from the business scene to everyday lifestyles, using various knowledge and ideas, to stay comfortable in 28 C rooms.the ministry estimated that the campaign

resulted in a 1,720,000-ton reduction in CO2 emission, the equivalent volume of CO2 emitted by about 3.85 million households for one month. Cool Biz: not wearing suit and tie

Re-making practices and places

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Re-arranging the relation between body, clothing, climate and building technologies

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Re-inventing practices?

time

Before air conditioning Air conditioning Beyond air conditioning

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There are lots more concepts on offer for policy makers willing to go beyond the ABC

dynamics infrastructure practice

regime system transition

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Theories of practice suggests that policy shapes what counts as normal practice (and hence sustainability) by:

•Contributing to the circulation and distribution of elementsInfrastructuresIdeas and ideologiesAccumulations of competence

•Defining valued projects – bundles and complexes of practiceShaping relations between practice – e.g. competition for time and other

resources

• Policy is inside and not outside the system it seeks to change. Transitions in practice are not processes over which any one set of actors has control.

These ideas also imply that:

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Disadvantages of practice theory for policy

No 1. recognises that policy has a part to play in maintaining unsustainable ways of life

No 2. highlights basic questions about how demand is made

No 3. points to material inequalities and differences

No 4. lessons are not transferable, each practice is different

No 5. acknowledges limits of agency

No 6. creates space for debate about the scale and direction of change

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“our understanding .... of the interaction between policy and social practice is as yet so limited that it would be difficult to see how policy could make use of this position – beyond taking social norms a bit more seriously as influences on behaviour” (Jackson 2005: 55).

Ideas that don’t fit the ABC model are not useful

How to ignite social knowledge around climate change?

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Chameleon: fitting in

Coping with external pressures, managing to blend in, to travel and to survive

Landscape of ideas: challenging

Populated by academics and non-academics alike; currents of debate, force-fields of influence; change is endogenous; interaction is unavoidable yet structured

How social science researchers respond to questions that are not of their own making