Sustainable Consumption Articles

These publications reflect the development of our field since SCORAI was founded in 2008 until 2022

Recently, we asked the subscribers to the SCORAI listserv to suggest publications from the past decade or so which reflect major developments of the field of Sustainable Consumption. The responses we received were in the form of individual papers, reports and bibliographic lists. The list below is a pared down version of these submissions. Since sustainable consumption is a multidisciplinary field of scholarship and practice, we did not try to group them by topic; and since arranging them alphabetically did not make sense either, we settled on chronology as the organizing principle, choosing 2008 as a start: the year of founding of SCORAI.

There was no set of criteria for selection, no advisory committee, no decision tree. There was only one guiding principle: to capture the richness of the multiple perspectives which comprise the body of knowledge about the structure and functioning of consumer society, the forces that allow it to maintain and reproduce itself, and promising pathways for transitioning beyond it. The list is but an echo of how the field developed. Some of you will be unhappy with what is in it, and what is not. This is however a living list: please keep sending us more suggestions on what should be added to it.

The chronological arrangement of the bibliography also highlights the temporal evolution of the field: from the early emphasis on individual consumer behaviors, consumer culture, marketing and behavioral change; to a more systemic thinking about drivers of consumption, including institutions, social practices and technological change; to examining consumption from the angle of human well-being; to quantifying the link between consumption and greenhouse gas emissions; to recognizing the role of economic growth, political power and the financialization of the economy; to acknowledging the issues of equity and social justice in a transition to more sustainable consumption.

2022

DECOUPLING DEBUNKED. EVIDENCE AND ARGUMENTS AGAINST GREEN GROWTH AS A SOLE STRATEGY FOR SUSTENABILITY. A STUDY EDITED BY THE EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENT BUREAU EEB

by Parrique,T., Barth, J., Briens, F., C. Kerschnre, KRAUS-Polk, A., Kuokkanen, A., Spangenberg, J.H.

EEB, European Environmental Bureau (2019)

Sustainable Consumption Articles

These publications reflect the development of our field since SCORAI was founded in 2008 until 2022

2022

DECOUPLING DEBUNKED. EVIDENCE AND ARGUMENTS AGAINST GREEN GROWTH AS A SOLE STRATEGY FOR SUSTENABILITY. A STUDY EDITED BY THE EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENT BUREAU EEB

WHAT SOCIAL CONTRACT FOR A FINITE WORLD?

Global Multi-Regional Input-Output methodology reveals lower energy footprint in an alternative community project

Toward Sustainable Wellbeing: Advances in Contemporary Concepts

HOW DOES AFFLUENT CONSUMPTION COME TO CONSUMERS? A RESEARCH AGENDA FRO EXPLORNG FOUNDATIONS AND LOCK-INS OF AFFLUENT CONSUMPTION

Comprehensive Evidence Implies a Higher Social Cost of CO2

National Responsibility for Ecological Breakdown: A Fair-Shares Assessment of Resource Use, 1970–2017

Impacts of meeting minimum access on critical earth systems amidst the Great Inequality

Public acceptance of post-growth: Factors and implications for post-growth strategy

From an Ethic of Sufficiency to its Policy and Practice in Late Capitalism

THE HUMAN ECO-PREDICAMENT: OVERSHOOT AND THE POPULATION CONUNDRUM

2021

The Outsized Carbon Footprints of the Super-Rich

Social Policy Without Growth: Moving Towards Sustainable Welfare States

Through the Eye of a Needle: An Eco-Heterodox Perspective on the Renewable Energy Transition,

Building the bridge between Protected Needs and consumption corridors

Hamburg Climate Futures Outlook 2021

Assessing the plausibility of deep decarbonization by 2050

The Political Economy of (Un)Sustainable Production and Consumption

A Multidisciplinary Synthesis for Research and Action

The Political Economy of car dependence: A systems of provision approach

Sufficiency Transitions: A Review of Consumption Changes for Environmental Sustainability

Wellbeing Matters: Tackling growth dependency

Urgent need for post-growth climate mitigation scenarios

1.5-Degree Lifestyles

Towards A Fair Consumption Space for All

1.5-Degree Lifestyles scenarios

suggest the need for new mitigation pathways

Sustainable Lifestyles after Covid-19

Sustainable Consumption Communication

A Review of an Emerging Field of Research

Changing our ways? Behaviour change and the climate crisis The report of the Cambridge Sustainability Commission

Global Carbon Inequality, 1990-2019

Global redistribution of income and household energy footprints: a computational thought experiment

1.5 °C degrowth scenarios suggest the need for new mitigation pathways

Challenging social norms to recraft practices: A Living Lab approach to reducing household energy use in eight European countries

Preparedness of Young People for a Sustainable Lifestyle: Awareness and Willingness

Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use​

An international analysis of social provisioning

Prepare developed democracies for long-run economic slowdowns

2020

A systematic reiew of the evidence on decoupling of GDP, resource use and GHG emissions, part II: synthesizing the insights

A Societal Transformation Scenario for Staying Below 1.5°C

Consumption-based carbon accounting: sense and sensibility

Why carbon pricing is not sufficient to mitigate climate change—and how “sustainability transition policy” can help

1.5-Degree Lifestyles

Targets and options for reducing lifestyle carbon footprints Institute for Global Environmental Strategies

New Conceptions of Sufficient Home Size in High Income Countries

Are we Approaching a Sustainable Consumption Transition?

Theories of Practices: Agency, Technology, and Culture

Exploring the relevance of practice theories for the governance of sustainable consumption practices in the new world-order

Quantifying the potential for climate change mitigation of consumption options

Wellbeing matters: Tackling growth dependency

An economy that works: Briefing Paper 3.

A Just Green Transition

The limits of energy sufficiency

A review of the evidence for rebound effects and negative spillovers from behavioural change.

Pathways to 1.5-degree lifestyles by 2030

Happier with less?

Members of European environmental grassroots initiatives reconcile lower carbon footprints with higher life satisfaction and income increases

Scientists’ warning on affluence

Universal Basic Services

A theoretical and moral framework

Power and Politics in Sustainable Consumption Research and Practice

The political economy of car dependence

A systems of provision approach.

Providing decent living with minimum energy:

A global scenario.

A reexamination on how behavioral interventions can promote household action to limit climate change

2019

It starts at home?

Climate policies targeting household consumption and behavioral decisions are key to low-carbon futures

Sustainable living

bridging the North-South divide in lifestyles and consumption debates

1.5-Degree Lifestyles

Targets and Options for Reducing Lifestyle Carbon Footprints.

Unraveling the claims for (and against) green growth

Socio-economic conditions for satisfying human needs at low energy use