Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Participatory Modeling to Elicit Behavioral Drivers in Environmental Dilemmas: the Case of Air Pollution in Talca, Chile

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the exploration of environmental modeling methods based on the elicitation of stakeholders’ mental models. This aim is motivated by the necessity to understand the dilemmas and behavioral rationales of individuals for supporting the management of environmental problems. The methodology developed for this paper integrates qualitative and quantitative methods by deploying focus groups for the elicitation of the behavioral rationales of the target population, and grounded theory to code the information gained in the focus groups and to guide the development of a dynamic simulation model. The approach is applied to a case of urban air pollution caused by residential heating with wood in central Chile. The results show how the households’ behavior interrelates with the governmental management strategies and provide valuable and novel insights into potential challenges to the implementation of policies to manage the local air pollution problem. The experience further shows that the developed participatory modeling approach allows to overcome some of the issues currently encountered in the elicitation of individuals’ behavioral rationales and in the quantification of qualitative information

Die experimentelle Stadt: Ent- oder (Re)politisierung städtischer Transformationen?

Experimente gewinnen zunehmend an Bedeutung in gesellschaftlichen Gestaltungs- und Innovationsprozessen; insbesondere im Kontext von städtischen Nachhaltigkeitstransitionen. Experimenten wird zugutegehalten, dass sie aufgrund ihrer iterativen und partizipationsorientierten Art der Lösungsfindung besser als traditionelle Governance-Ansätze geeignet seien, mit Unsicherheit, Komplexität und heterogenen Wertevorstellungen umzugehen. Jedoch wurde ebenfalls festgestellt, dass Experimente in manchen Fällen unzulänglich Bezug nehmen auf kontextspezifische Lebensrealitäten und soziopolitische Konfigurationen, dass sie bestehende Machtstrukturen festigen können, und am Rande oder außerhalb formalpolitischer Entscheidungsprozesse Realitäten schaffen. In diesem Beitrag beleuchten wir anhand von Beispielen aus unserer Forschungspraxis die Vielfalt der Rollen, die Experimente in der politischen Aushandlung und Gestaltung städtischer Nachhaltigkeitstransitionen einnehmen können. Wir decken eine große Bandbreite von experimentellen Zugängen ab und beleuchten diese aus unterschiedlichen Perspektiven: Pop-up-Fahrradwege während Corona, technologiezentrierte Reallabore, Reallabore im Bereich der Pendelmobilität, Reallabore zur nachhaltigen Stadtentwicklung, und Einwohner*innen-Initiative für autobefreite Stadtteile am Beispiel der Kiezblocks. Wir zeigen auf, dass sich Experimente unterschiedlichen Gegenständen annehmen können und somit unterschiedliche Aspekte städtischer Nachhaltigkeitstransitionen politisch prägen. Der Beitrag verdeutlicht zudem, dass Experimente immer auch Aus- und Einschließungsprozesse mit sich bringen, und dass auch solche Prozesse politisch aufgeladen sind

The Advent of Practice Theories in Research on Sustainable Consumption: Past, Current and Future Directions of the Field

The application of practice theories in the domain of sustainability research in consumer studies is increasingly advocated based on the premise that this allows to analyse consumption as a social phenomenon. Consequently, the applications of social practice theories to this field are expanding geometrically and to date, little retrospective work on this evolution has been made. We conduct a bibliometric analysis of applications of practice theories in the domain of sustainability research in consumer studies. Our results show a temporal succession of research trends: ‘consumer identity’ dominated the field between 2009 and 2012, ‘business and governance’ between 2012 and 2014, ‘sustainable consumption and production’ between 2013 and 2014, ‘urban living and policy’ between 2014 and 2015 and ‘household energy’ from 2015 until the present. We see a high potential of future applications of practice theories in the fields of the sharing and circular economy, as well as in research on smart cities. We provide new insights into the evolution and future trends of applications of social practice theory to domains that are relevant for research on sustainability and consumer studies

Pratiques de mobilité en Suisse: Une étude qualitative sur les choix modaux des pendulaires urbains et la mobilité au quotidien [Dataset]

27 semi-structured interviews. Languages: German, Swiss German, French

Exploring transition pathways of habitual transport behaviour

Private households account for more than half of the demand addressed to the transport sector. We propose an analytical framework to describe transitions in transport behaviour across cases and to identify their respective drivers. With this, we aim to better understand how patterns of transport behaviour form and to inform the development of policies to set transport behaviour onto a more sustainable pathway. People’s transport behaviour has been found to be best described as habitual behaviour. However, most policies to address the unsustainability of transport behaviour focus on isolated choice situations. They ignore the complexity that arises from the embeddedness of habitual behaviour in material and social realities, given by configurations of infrastructure, available technologies, skills, social norms, individual beliefs, and the necessity to coordinate the different activities of which everyday life consists. Our framework focuses on these interrelations. A first application of our framework illustrated its potential to inform policy design. We could show to which degree transport behaviour trapped in a phase of self-reproduction, and to which degree established habits regarding transport are already being questioned. Based on such insights, differentiated and case-based policies for a sustainability transition in transport behaviour in cities can be designed

Modelling Urban Transitions: A Social Practice Theoretic Approach to the Urban Metabolism

Urban growth and the increase of the human environmental imprint has led to a growing interest in urban sustainability, a field mainly addressed by urban ecology and urban metabolism studies. The realisation that the urban material and energy flows are mainly driven by household activities resulted in the acknowledgement that to understand the drivers of urban metabolic trajectories, it is necessary to include social factors into the onceptualisation of the urban system. However, so far no satisfying and operationalisable conceptualisation of the urban system as a nexus of social, technological, geographical and environmental factors exists. The aim of the present research is to develop an approach to overcome this gap. This research starts with the assumption that the household processes driving the urban material and energetic flows are key to understanding urban metabolic regimes and trajectories. It thus attemps to study urban transitions from a social practice theoretic approach. This methodological choice is motivated by the ambition of social practice theory to analyse the formation, reproduction and transformation of practices - nested sets of routinised activities - as parts of a system of things, technologies, skills, social structures, meanings, the environment etc., and in general by its focus on understanding the mechanisms behind social change. However, social practice theory has been struggling with the operationalisation of its concepts, due to the nestedness of practices and the resulting difficulty to delimit the field of analysis, and the lack of a general theory of how the different elements of which social practices consist are related. To overcome these challenges, this research proposes to model urban trajectories and transitions as the emergent behaviour of a socioechnological-environmental system, of which the different components drive the formation, reproduction andtransformation of social practices and thus the urban metabolic flows. For this, a mixed-method approach of agent-based and system dynamics modelling informed by sociological theories and qualitative field work is to be developed. Firstly, urban trajectories and patterns are identified. Secondly, models are used as a tool to test different theory-based explanatios for the emergence of such patterns. More specifically, the aim is to replicate long-term patterns and trajectories of specific practices - such as nutrition or commuting - across different urban contexts based on different theories regarding social change and the formation of social practices. The model hypotheses are to be developed based on theories and qualitative data, and tested with participatory approaches

The challenges of studying change in carbon-intensive urban consumption practices: Exploring the dynamics of practice change and of normative considerations in knowledge production

Problem. To reach international greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets, the carbon intensity of urban resource and energy consumption must be reduced. Technological innovation alone is not sufficient: The practices that constitute urban household demand for mobility and energy must change. This is no trivial task: Such practices are embedded in complex dynamics and entangled with notions of good and desirable lives and, as such, with normative considerations. Therefore, on the one hand, research is needed on how change in urban consumption practices is entangled with dynamics that concern different domains and play out at different scales. On the other hand, research is needed on how knowledge production that is concerned with such change is shaped by normative considerations. Aim. This thesis aims to address the challenges that must be tackled when studying change in carbon-intensive urban consumption practices. It aims to disentangle the dynamics that give rise to and characterise such change, and to shed light on how normative considerations enter and shape knowledge production that is concerned with such change. Approach. This thesis is based on an exploratory approach. It takes as starting points approaches and theories that have been found promising to address the problems at hand, and refines them through empirical and literature-based investigations. Insights. Firstly, this thesis identified open questions regarding promising approaches to study change in carbon-intensive urban consumption practices. It shed light on the state of the art of practice theoretic research on consumption; and it summarised the insights gained and the questions left open by studies that enquired into the drivers and dynamics of urban energy consumption. Secondly, at the example of urban commuting, it addressed open questions regarding practice theoretic approaches to consumption. It provided explanations for the complex patterns that can be observed in modal shifts and gave first answers to the question of how meaning becomes ascribed to commuting. The thesis refined practice theoretic approaches so that they better account for the differentiated embeddedness of practitioners in structural dynamics and for the interplay between habitual and intentional modes of acting. Thirdly, at the example of urban energy consumption, this thesis tested assumptions that underpin studies that analyse consumption patterns as emerging properties of cities. It revealed the importance of local level and context specific dynamics. Fourthly, the thesis identified processes through which normative considerations enter knowledge production concerned with change in carbon-intensive urban consumption practices, and sketched ideal-typical positions that reveal the different kinds of disagreements that can persist in such knowledge production processes. Lastly, this thesis revealed the dynamics of hegemonisation that characterise such knowledge production, and the challenges they present for knowledge production that aims to critically analyse processes of discursive closure and to open up new perspectives for change in carbon-intensive urban consumption practices. Overall, the thesis contributed to a more fine-grained understanding of the challenges that must be tackled when studying change in carbon-intensive urban consumption practices, and enhanced approaches for addressing them

A conceptual framework to study the dynamics of routine practice transitions

Actors from academia, politics, and the civil society increasingly acknowledge that to address our current unsustainable regimes of resource and energy demand, we need to redefine our ways of being and doing. Everyday practices are a key driver of energy and resource demand. Understanding patterns of practice dynamics and their drivers is therefore key on the way to a sustainability transition. This research aims to improve our understanding of how everyday practices, and their underlying conceptions of normality, are formed and transformed in a context of individual, social, infrastructural, institutional, and ecological dynamics. How conceptions of normality are enacted into practices is at the heart of theories of practice. They look at how the interconnectedness of practices in time and space shapes their reproduction or transformation, and have been powerful in providing insights into the often--observed path dependence and stickiness of practices. This focus on the self--reproducing aspects of practices however results in theories of practice remaining vague on how the conditions for practice change come about. And because practices are seen as constantly evolving, it is difficult to clearly delimit practice change. This complicates the analysis of patterns of practice change across cases. To overcome these issues, we propose a framework that looks at practice change as one dynamic process in a tightly interconnected system of dynamic processes on the individual, social, institutional, infrastructural, and ecological level. Practice change is seen as the result of the interplay of these processes. The framework builds on two metaphors from ecology and resilience theory: The adaptive cycle and the panarchy. The adaptive cycle describes the succession of phases of lock--in and innovation, by looking at variations in connectivity, built--up potential, and resilience. The panarchy describes a systems perspective according to which dynamics of self--reproduction and of innovation result from the spatio--temporal nestedness of different processes, each following the pattern of an adaptive cycle. These metaphors are used to operationalise theories of practice for the analysis of practice dynamics. They provide a structured way of describing practice change, and to derive explanations for the observed dynamic patterns. The framework is illustratively applied to the analysis of commuting practices in Hackney, UK. Hackney has observed an important increase in the modal share of cycling in the last years. As it is commonly done in empirical research building on theories of practice, the practice at hand -- commuting -- was operationalised through the materials, meanings, and skills, which are integrated in its enactment. Using the adaptive cycle metaphor to describe the development over time of commuting practices in Hackney allowed to build a timeline of phases in the life of commuting practices which were each characterised by different dynamics. This analysis notably showed the rapid disintegration of the practice of commuting by car, after this practice had for a long time been caught in strong self--reproducing mechanisms. This disintegration was followed by a phase of experimentation with different modes of commuting, which finally resulted in a new phase of stability, with cycling as the new norm. Focusing on the spatio--temporal nestedness of social, infrastructural, and ecosystem processes which played into the enactment of commuting practices, and on their mutual interrelations, further allowed to identify the drivers of the collapse of the practice of commuting by car, and of the emergence of cycling as the new norm. The framework therefore provides insights into how the self--reproducing mechanisms which keep potentially unsustainable practices in place are broken up, and what drives the emergence of new practices. Such knowledge could inspire policies to achieve a transition to more sustainable practices