How Can Researchers Measure the Impact of Structural Changes on Sustainability Transformations?

The widespread availability of affordable public transport services provides a structural incentive for consumers to choose this climate-friendly mobility option. Research into sustainable consumption and sustainable lifestyles is increasingly recognising the crucial role that such structural aspects play in shaping lifestyles. Structural changes are needed to enable consumers to switch to public transport, electric cars or green electricity, to purchase unpackaged food, or to install heat pumps.

According to the authors of the study "Assessing the impact of structural change in sustainable consumption and lifestyles research“, published in 'Consumption and Society', empirical research on sustainable consumption has overemphasised the individual, behavioural dimension, while at the same time bemoaning the limited amount of observed change. The study addresses this by presenting an analysis that focuses on the structural dimension and identifies potential avenues for its assessment. It is based on the findings of six EU-funded, international and interdisciplinary research projects addressing sustainable consumption, citizenship, and lifestyles.

Focussing on the role of structures within transformations towards sustainable lifestyles, the six European research consortia adopted different methodological approaches and assessed different forms of structures:

• EU 1.5° Lifestyles, for example, considers needs for structural change in the context of enabling lifestyle options, household behaviours, and routines that would align with the 1.5°C climate target.
• Climate CAMPAIGNers likewise aims to uncover structural changes required to foster enduring and climate-friendly behavioural shifts in lifestyle-related decision-making.
• ENCHANT examines how structural aspects constrain the possibilities of reducing household electricity consumption.
• FULFILL investigates the role of structures in the pursuit of a transformation towards low-carbon lifestyles that maintain individual and collective wellbeing.
• DIALOGUES is concerned with the role of structures as an element of practices that enable citizens to play a formative role in the energy transition.
• Finally, EnergyPROSPECTS explores internal and external structures that impact forms of citizen engagement towards a more just, democratic and sustainable energy system.

Being able to give an assessment of the likely impacts of specific structural changes, the authors argue, would be highly desirable when seeking to make a case for change to policymakers, for example. In order to shift the focus of decision-makers from the pursuit of individual behaviour change to structural change as a source of transformative momentum, sustainability research needs to be able to quantify the gains that can be achieved through the pursuit of changes in economic, political, technological and societal structures. Measurability is also a precondition for the inclusion of structural changes into climate and energy scenarios that assess the potential contribution of policy measures to reach climate goals. 

Against this backdrop, the team of authors presents different methods of evaluation and compares them in terms of their strengths and weaknesses, focuses, and blind spots. At the same time, the study identifies differences in the availability of methods suitable for assessing the role of structural change in sustainability transformations: Some forms of structural change – such as the rate of building renovations or changes in the energy mix – are far more amenable to quantification than others, for example the impacts of emerging narratives about what it means to lead a good life or political campaigns promoting new technologies.

The authors’ conclusions 

Among the methods examined in the study, there is no one single method that can be considered universally applicable or perfect in all situations. Firstly: all of the methods examined struggle with the assessment of the impact of changes in deep structures, whether they are societal, political, or economic in nature, such as understandings of a good life or of the role of markets. The methods assessed also have difficulty recognising disruptive, systemic changes. Secondly, perception-dependent and perception-independent approaches have different strengths and blind spots when it comes to assessing ideational and material structures. As a consequence, researchers must pay particular attention to their respective choice of methods and associated blind spots in relation to the role of structural change in the context of sustainability.   

Research in recent years has highlighted the significant impact of ideational and material, social, political, economic and technological structures on the sustainability of consumption and lifestyles. “Ultimately, any contribution we can make to make the impact of structural change better understood – also in numbers – is likely to be helpful in both political discourse and research", says lead author and RIFS Scientific Director, Professor Doris Fuchs. hen Diskurs als auch die Forschung hilfreich“, sagt Erstautorin Prof. Doris Fuchs vom RIFS. 

Publication:

Fuchs, D., Debourdeau, A., Dütschke, E., Fahy, F., Garzon, G., Kirchler, B., Klöckner, C. A., & Sahakian, M.: Assessing the impact of structural change in sustainable consumption and lifestyles research. Consumption and society, 10/2024. doi: 10.1332/ 27528499Y2024D000000033