Posts etiquetados ‘grassroots social innovations’

Fostering climate change action through sustainable food consumption. The spillover effect of collective engagement in Food Coops

Publicado: 9 diciembre, 2021 en Educación, Educación Ambiental, Medio Ambiente..., Participación Pública, People-Environment Research Group
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I share a new video of my paper presentations at the IAPS 2021 Symposium “Sustainability in the Post-Covid era: Challenges and Opportunities in face of Climate Change and the Energy Transition”, held in the city of A Coruña, from September 29th to October 1st, 2021, A Coruña (Spain).

The paper is entitled «Fostering climate change action through sustainable food consumption. The spillover effect of collective engagement in Food Coops«. It is authored by Isabel Lema Blanco, Ricardo García Mira  and  Jesús Miguel Muñoz Cantero,  from the University of A Coruña (Spain).

The abstract of the paper is the following:

Green consumption has become the focus of research on climate action and the promotion of sustainable lifestyles (García-Mira & Dumitru, 2017). However, changing people’s lifestyles involves profound transformations in individual behaviour as well as in market and institutions and research should also put the focus on the interlinkages among individuals, the social groups they are involved in, and the cultural and physical contexts of consumption and lifestyles. Several authors (Kastner & Matthies, 2014) have highlighted the need to empower people, and educate and motivate consumers to be able to seek new opportunities for sustainable behaviour. Further, recent studies in behavioural spillover (Nash et al., 2017) offer potential pathways to foster more sustainable lifestyles, for instance, whether performance of one behaviour influences willingness to engage in a second (desirable) behaviour, although the mechanisms behind spillover effects are not still well understood (Frezza et al., 2019).

The purpose of this study is to deepen the understanding of the role that conscious consumption initiatives play in promoting green lifestyles, investigating the social learning processes nurtured within these organizations and its relevance for the adoption of new climate-relevant behaviours. Following a qualitative approach, a multi-method design was used, which combined three data-collection techniques: participatory observation, document analysis and 26 in-depth interviews with members and ex-members of eight local food coops located in the Galician region (Spain). Interviews explored first the barriers and drivers for sustainable consumption in households, and to what extent engagement in collective forms of consumption fosters further adoption of green lifestyles.

The results identified different barriers that explain people’s resistance towards a more coherent change in their lifestyles. Galician food coops practitioners are well-educated people who share pro-environmental values. However, structural, cultural and psychological barriers have been found as barriers for the adoption of low-carbon behaviours. Second, the findings of the study show that Galician responsible consumption initiatives function as spaces for collective experimentation that favour social learning processes in the individual sphere and in the collective sphere of the participants, transforming shared meanings, competences and structures. Involvement in these sustainable social innovations foster cognitive, relational and skill-related changes in participants.

Peer-to-peer learning processes that increase perceived competence and self-efficacy become crucial dimensions for practitioners to further experience with sustainable lifestyles. Moreover, collective food consumption appears to encourage conscious consumption behaviour such sustaining as vegan or vegetarian diets as well as in other domains in the private sphere, such as reducing energy use in households, low-carbon mobility or frugality lifestyles. This effect appears to be related to the (social) learning processes nurtured within these organizations. Galician food co-ops enhance practitioners’ environmental awareness, changing their mindsets and worldviews as well as increasing their critical thinking capacity and their desire of being more coherent in their daily practices, being more favourable disposed toward sustainable lifestyles. In conclusion, the study highlights the relevance of the social learning processes that emerge within the conscious consumption initiatives that constitute innovative formulas for environmental participation, which appear to foster positive spillover to everyday practice in a variety of lifestyle domains.

Exploring consumers’ motivations to engage in local food social innovations. A study on the Galician conscious and responsible consumption movement.

Publicado: 4 diciembre, 2021 en Comunicación Ambiental, Educación, Educación Ambiental, Medio Ambiente..., Participación Pública, People-Environment Research Group
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I share the video of my paper presentation at the IAPS 2021 Symposium “Sustainability in the Post-Covid era: Challenges and Opportunities in face of Climate Change and the Energy Transition”, held in the city of A Coruña, from September 29th to October 1st, 2021, A Coruña (Spain).

The paper is entitled «Exploring consumers’ motivations to engage in local food social innovations. A study on the Galician conscious and responsible consumption movement. It is authored by Isabel Lema Blanco, Ricardo García Mira  and  Jesús Miguel Muñoz Cantero,  from the University of A Coruña (Spain).

The abstract of the paper is the following:

Governments, scientists and environmental organizations worldwide have stressed the need to decrease humanity’s environmental impact, to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, to adapt our society to global warming and other social and environmental challenges that should be globally faced. Consequently, green consumption has come to centre the interest for research on climate action and the promotion of sustainable lifestyles. In this context, the use of behavioural models to better understand the social and psychological dimensions that interact with people’s consumption patterns has gained increasing interest, and a vast majority of studies have focused on the consideration of individual factors to explain decisions regarding the purchase or consumption of green products. However, there is a growing interest in social innovations which take place in the civil society arena, and formulate bottom-up innovative solutions for sustainable development at the local scale (Seyfang & Smith, 2007). This study focus on the social and psychological dimensions that interplay in people’s patterns of consumption, studying the factors driving collective forms of food consumption in the context of grassroots social innovations (Zoll et al., 2017).

Following a qualitative approach, a multi-method design was used, which combined three data-collection techniques: participatory observation, document analysis and 26 in-depth interviews with participants in eight local food co-ops located in the Galician region (Spain). The results of the study contribute to the understanding of the different human motivations, aspirations and desires underlying conscious and responsible consumption behaviour, and the individual and collective factors that influence the processes for behavioural change at the individual and society-wide levels. First, self-oriented motivations are particularly significant for green consumption. Findings show strong linkages between health concern, environmental awareness, and the desire of sustaining healthy diets based on the high quality of seasonal organically produced groceries. Environmental awareness was found to be an essential motive across all the participants, which appears also associated with altruistic and socially oriented values (e.g., animal welfare, fair trade). Besides, feelings of connectedness with the rural territory motivates the desire of protecting these specific environments by supporting organic and local agriculture and primary sector of the economy.

In terms of motivations for people to engage in collective forms of consumption (e.g., being a member of a Food Co-op), the participants in this study report three types of motivations: a) the accessibility and affordability to organic and fair-trade groceries; b) socio-political goals; and c) the satisfaction of social needs. The desire of joining a consumption initiative is preceded by the identification of these organizations as the most suitable space for satisfying their needs of consumption. Interviewees explicit a desire for autonomy and control over their purchasing decisions, becoming independent of global corporations and supermarkets. Galician food activists share social and political ambitions and conceive food coops as grassroots movements with the capacity to change the dominant social paradigms challenging the unsustainable practices that characterize the dominant system of food production and distribution. Consumption is interpreted as “a political act”, a new way of engaging in political activism, appealing to large structural changes such as the democratization of the economy. A limited sample of participants expressed that under the decision of joining a consumption initiative relies on the desire to socialize with like-minded people, expanding their social network or friendships, or to experiment a sense of belonging, which lead to the desire to engage in collective projects who share common values, goals and environmental concerns. Also, some of them point their common ambition to change the relationships between consumers and producers, fostering mutual respect, proximity, and empathy, recognizing, and dignifying the work of the farmer/producer.

In conclusion, the results confirm that awareness of the environmental, social, and economic consequences of consumption is a direct antecedent for conscious and responsible consumer behaviour (Suárez et al., 2020). Interestingly, the decision to join a consumer’s initiative appears to be the outcome of a reflexive process on personal wellbeing linked also to environmental and social and political ambitions, which are materialized in cooperative forms of economy. Further, environmental awareness or social-political goals are not sufficient for people to tackle a process of personal change. They also need to experience the desire to “put into practice” new consumption models that promote sustainable transitions.