Sustainable Practices Research Group

The consumption behaviour of the populations of the world's richer societies poses a great challenge to the achievement of environmental sustainability. The programme of the Sustainable Practices Group is designed to enhance the social scientific understanding of how habits in areas of everyday consumption form, reproduce and may be changed.
The Programme will deliver a multi-level analysis of three environmentally-sensitive practices - eating, water-use and sheltering. It will also conduct a series of action research interventions in stakeholder organisations. Each empirical research project is strategically oriented towards answering central research questions regarding how habits operate, and what are the macro-, meso- and micro- level drivers of change. An inter-disciplinary programme, it focuses on practices, emphasising the importance of collective understandings, routines and habits, and the material and social circumstances which constrain and facilitate sustainable ways of life. It offers fresh perspectives on policy relevant issues of behaviour change.
The Group operates as a consortium with a hub at Manchester and partners at the Universities of Cardiff, Edinburgh, Essex, Lancaster, Leeds, Newcastle, Queens University Belfast and Salford.