Understanding role models for change: a multilevel analysis of success factors of grassroots initiatives for sustainable consumption

Research output: Journal contributionsScientific review articlesResearch

Authors

In order to achieve sustainable societies, we need models of behavior that go beyond individuals equating wellbeing and material consumption levels. Lowering individual footprints might be more acceptable once we include social relations, adopting responsibilities for other human and non-human life as well as civic engagement as complementary sources of wellbeing. Grassroots initiatives that stimulate collective action and social learning contribute to these diverse sources of wellbeing when striving to facilitate sustainable consumption. Thus, they can become role models for societal change. This review sets out to investigate why grassroots initiatives are created and developed successfully by focusing on the processes of founding, engaging in, developing and maintaining grassroots initiatives. We look at insights from different disciplines that address behavioral change and social learning to develop an overview of factors that are from an interdisciplinary perspective highly relevant to understand societal change processes. By means of organizing the analysis along three levels of human behavior – the individual level, the group level, and the societal level – we capture the multifaceted relationships influencing the success of grassroots initiatives. We present theoretical and empirical evidence connecting a broad spectrum of concepts that can subsequently be used as testable factors in fieldwork for in-depth investigations of grassroots success.

Original languageEnglish
JournalJournal of Cleaner Production
Volume134
Issue numberPart A
Pages (from-to)98-111
Number of pages14
ISSN0959-6526
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 15.10.2016

    Research areas

  • Sustainability Science - Grassroots organizations, Societal change processes, Sustainable consumption

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. Ambient Assited Energy Management
  2. A Sampling Framework for Uncertainty in Individual Environmental Decisions
  3. Das Inverted Classroom Model (ICM) im Kontext kompetenzorientierter Hochschullehre
  4. A duty-block network approach for an integrated driver rostering problem in public bus transport
  5. Neighbourhood interactions drive overyielding in mixed-species tree communities
  6. Ankunft einer Katze
  7. Integrating a piezoelectric actuator with mechanical and hydraulic devices to control camless engines
  8. Computer-Kriegs-Spiele oder: eine Kultur der Gewalt
  9. Light treatment of a complex problem
  10. Georeferencing System for Maneuvering of Autonomous Truck in Mining Environment
  11. Integrated simulation method for investment decisions of micro production systems
  12. The Role of Assessment and Quality Management in Transformations towards Sustainable Development
  13. A new didactic approach in Engineering Education for conceptual understanding of Euler's Formula
  14. Intersektionalität
  15. Subtle Differences
  16. Remaining time and opportunities at work: Relationships between age, work characteristics, and occupational future time perspective
  17. Datenschutzbedenken in Sozialen Netzen -
  18. Global Tax Governance: What is Wrong With It and How to Fix It by Peter Dietsch and Thomas Rixen (eds). Colchester: ECPR Press, 2016
  19. Democratization as Human Empowerment
  20. Good-Practice-Sammlung
  21. Power centres
  22. Telling your own stories
  23. Microstructure evolution and texture development during production of homogeneous fine-grained aluminum wire by friction extrusion
  24. Not Only a Workplace
  25. Logic as a Medium
  26. Numerical responses of saproxylic beetles to rapid increases in dead wood availability following geometrid moth outbreaks in sub-arctic mountain birch forest
  27. Multivariate Optimization of Analytical Methodology and a First Attempt to an Environmental Risk Assessment of β-Blockers in Hospital Wastewater
  28. Ludic Interfaces