Managing societal sustainability through behaviour change; a systematic synthesis of current approaches

Ireland is one of the few EU countries that has failed to meet its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020. The Climate Change Advisory Council under the Chairmanship of Prof John Fitzgerald reported to... [ view full abstract ]

Ireland is one of the few EU countries that has failed to meet its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20% by 2020. The Climate Change Advisory Council under the Chairmanship of Prof John Fitzgerald reported to the Citizens’ Assembly in November 2017 and advised that Ireland needs to take urgent action to move the country back to a sustainable path, so that it can attempt to meet its target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. Ultimately, they recommend greater leadership from government and from citizens, as well as engagement at local community level. However, translating the aim of improving the sustainable behaviour of communities and individuals through informed public and social policy has never been direct or clear. There is a need to gain a better understanding of individual values and motivations that influence sustainable consumption behaviour. Theoretically, the field of behavioural management in environmental consumption is much contested (Hall 2013; Shove 2014). Considerable debate continues regarding behavioural change and policy learning at both an individual and societal level and the balance of responsibility between these two levels (Geels et al, 2015). According to Spaargaren (2011), the ways in which ordinary people deal with environmental matters requires detailed examination; in how they perceive, understand, evaluate and manage the connections between their personal lifestyles and routine consumption practices and global environmental change. Policy makers seek to gain a better understanding of these everyday consumption practices of consumers or citizens in order to reduce overall environmental impact in areas such as CO2 transport emissions and in managing dwelling places (Dietz et al., 2009). However, these practices are nested within societal values and systems influenced by both intrinsic as well as extrinsic motivation, and their consequences in terms of citizen empowerment, governance and sustainable policy development.

This is a rapidly expanding area of research for those in public and social policy, as well as in science and business. According to George et al., (2016), there are numerous examples of potential avenues for engagement by management scholars and educators to address these grand societal challenges. They outline a framework to address the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs). The Academy of Management (USA) has engaged in fundamental debates on the dynamics of society and organizations. George et al., (2016) encourages management scholars to engage in tackling these broader societal challenges through their collaborative research and collective insight. Though many different disciplines are addressing the problems in managing sustainability, there are many challenges including agreeing common definitions of sustainable behaviour, the policy implementation gap in terms of limited persistence of change in behaviours, as well as the paternalistic perspective in treating the individual as a consumer without regard to the societal context.

Thus, there is a need to develop a greater understanding of the context in which decisions are made, whether by organisations or individuals, and to acknowledge the twin dimensions of societal dynamics and the complexity of its interaction within the concept of sustainability. This paper aims to contribute to concept development in influencing sustainability-oriented behaviour within a policy and governance context, and provides initial guidance from a wider disciplinary perspective. Bringing together findings from a diverse body of literature across the science, social-science and business disciplines, the authors review and integrate findings, and, in so doing, inform a synthesized review of current thinking and the state-of-the-art.  This highlights a new understanding of the interconnected status of societal-sustainability theory and provides a robust template on which to advance the design of a new evidence-informed societal paradigm.

Methods

This study utilizes a Systematic Literature Review (SLR) methodology to identify work on the challenges of influencing sustainability-oriented behaviour within a policy and governance context and to advance the UN-SDGs, in order to develop an informed inclusive approach to the advancement of sustainability in society. The SLR method was used to address these challenges by identifying, critically evaluating and interrogating findings from relevant literature across a wide range of disciplines utilising a rigorous evidence-based methodology. The literature was initially scoped to determine relevant databases, publication formats and the availability of outputs and scholarly material.  A range of electronic databases including EBSCO Business Source Complete, ISI Web of Knowledge and JSTOR were searched. The search was limited to peer reviewed articles published in English between 2002 and 2018. This time-frame was applied to reflect the contemporary nature of the problem. A series of key search terms in conjunction with specific inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to identify the relevant literature.  In total 252 papers were identified.  The search process was implemented using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) structure.  This body of literature was then subjected to screening using higher order inclusion-exclusion criteria which incorporated a more tightly specified theoretical context in terms of sustainability, society and behaviour.  This process narrows the domain of validity for selected studies.  This was followed by content analysis as part of the eligibility testing process which used an enhanced search-term based template that shifts the focus from sensitivity to specificity.  Finally, an agreed data extraction protocol was applied to provide structure, reliability, consistency and inter-comparability in the data outputs.  This SLR approach attempts to collate all empirical evidence that fits pre-specified eligibility criteria in addressing the research question. It uses explicit, systematic methods that are selected with a view to minimizing bias, thus providing enhanced reliability in the findings from which conclusions can be drawn and decisions made (Oxman & Guyatt; 1993).

Findings/Implications

Key findings from the literature include the difficulties in agreement in defining what sustainability means and how to achieve it, as well as lack of consideration of the wider social dimension and poor recognition of the complexity of sustainable behaviour as an iterative process. These challenges are pressing as the political system struggles to match the twin demands of economic prosperity while protecting and enhancing environmental quality for the well-being of society and the health of citizens.  The imperative that emerges from this study is a recognition of the need to build innovative relationship networks in society, in which the value of sustainability is created.  This approach is optimal when this process is collaborative rather than individual, so that norms are re-defined and society is guided towards a more integrated model with the potential to bring about systems-shaping innovations. This innovative process can be seen as the set of connected actions that shift a system such as a community, a sector or an economy towards a more sustainable path.

Through systematically reviewing and evaluating the theoretical and empirical literature a deeper understanding of decision-making in the societal-sustainability context is developed.  Thus, providing a template for the development and integration of new approaches to shaping sustainability in society based on nested innovation networks working in consort.  Such approaches hold great promise as tools to modify society and consumer behaviour and lead to the development of a new environmental paradigm.

References

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Dietz, T., Gardner, G.T., Gilligan, J., Stern, P.C. and Vandenbergh, M.P., (2009). Household actions can provide a behavioral wedge to rapidly reduce US carbon emissions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(44), 18452-18456.

Fuchs, C., (2017). Critical Social Theory and Sustainable Development: The Role of Class, Capitalism and Domination in a Dialectical Analysis of Un/Sustainability. Sustainable Development. DOI: 10.1002/sd.1673.

Geels, F.W., McMeekin, A., Mylan, J. and Southerton, D., (2015). A critical appraisal of Sustainable Consumption and Production research: The reformist, revolutionary and reconfiguration positions. Global Environmental Change, 34, 1-12.

George, G., Howard-Grenville, J., Joshi, A. and Tihanyi, L. (2016) Understanding and tackling societal grand challenges through management research. Academy of Management Journal, 59(6), 1880–1895.

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Hall, C. M. (2013) Framing behavioural approaches to understanding and governing sustainable tourism consumption: beyond neoliberalism, “nudging” and “green growth”? Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 21(7), 1091-1109.

Oxman A.D., Guyatt G.H. (1993). The science of reviewing research. Annals of the New York Academy of Science. 703:125-33; discussion 133-4.

Shove, E. (2014). Putting practice into policy: reconfiguring questions of consumption and climate change. Contemporary Social Science, 9(4), 415-429.

Spaargaren, G., (2011). 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. Global Environmental Change, 21(3), 813-822.