Avoiding Asda? Exploring consumer motivations in local organic good networks

Supermarkets such as Asda (owned by Wal-Mart) have responded to the growth in direct marketing and alternative agri-food networks by promoting local produce ranges, and increasingly sourcing organic produce from the UK. Thus consumers now have a choice of outlets for local and organic produce. This paper examines the implications of that choice for direct marketing in particular, and sustainable consumption in general. The paper tests the hypothesis that consumers make a conscious choice to engage in an alternative food network when they purchase through direct marketing channels, and that they are deliberately avoiding mainstream supermarkets. Research findings are presented from a survey of customers of a local organic food cooperative in Norfolk, UK which examines consumer motivations and perceptions of alternative and mainstream food provisioning. The hypothesis is confirmed: consumers expressed wide-ranging preferences for participation in the alternative food system, though there is some concern that the convenience and accessibility of supermarket provision of local and organic food threaten to erode the wider social and community benefits achieved by direct marketing initiatives

Inequality and sustainable consumption: Bridging the gaps

This article examines the potential for cross-fertilisation between the sustainable consumption (SC) scholarship and the environmental justice (EJ) scholarship. The article first maps the two areas of scholarship, discussing the cognitive, social marketing and social provisioning systems literatures of SC and the empirical and conceptual literature on EJ. The article then discusses the potential for cross-fertilisation between the two areas of scholarship. It indicates how SC scholarship can benefit from the social justice sensitivity of the EJ scholarship and how the latter area of scholarship can gain a whole new area of empirical research focusing on social justice aspects of consumption. The article seeks to demonstrate the social and policy significance of the cross-fertilisation by comparing the consumption and EJ implications of carbon taxation and personal carbon allowance trading as tools of carbon management. The article suggests that to be fair both strategies of carbon management require complementary (albeit different) measures that address background inequalities and capabilities to act in the setting created by the instruments

What Influences the Diffusion of Grassroots Innovations for Sustainability? Investigating Community Currency Niches

Community action for sustainability is a promising site of socio-technical innovation. Here we test the applicability of co-evolutionary niche theories of innovation diffusion (Strategic Niche Management, SNM) to the context of ‘grassroots innovations’. We present new empirical findings from an international study of 12 community currency niches (such as LETS, time banks, local currencies). These are parallel systems of exchange, designed to operate alongside mainstream money, meeting additional sustainability needs. Our findings confirm SNM predictions that niche-level activity correlates with diffusion success, but we highlight additional or confounding factors, and how niche theories might be adapted to better fit civil-society innovations. In so doing, we develop a model of grassroots innovation niche diffusion which builds on existing work and tailors it to this specific context. The paper concludes with a series of theoretically-informed recommendations for practitioners and policymakers to support the development and potential of grassroots innovations

Desperately seeking niches: Grassroots innovations and niche development in the community currency field

The sustainability transitions literature seeks to explain the conditions under which technological innovations can diffuse and disrupt existing socio-technical systems through the successful scaling up of experimental ‘niches’; but recent research on ‘grassroots innovations’ argues that civil society is a promising but under-researched site of innovation for sustainability, albeit one with very different characteristics to the market-based innovation normally considered in the literature. This paper aims to address that research gap by exploring the relevance of niche development theories in a civil society context. To do this, we examine a growing grassroots innovation – the international field of community currencies – which comprises a range of new socio-technical configurations of systems of exchange which have emerged from civil society over the last 30 years, intended to provide more environmentally and socially sustainable forms of money and finance. We draw on new empirical research from an international study of these initiatives comprising primary and secondary data and documentary sources, elite interviews and participant observation in the field. We describe the global diffusion of community currencies, and then conduct a niche analysis to evaluate the utility of niche theories for explaining the development of the community currency movement. We find that some niche-building processes identified in the existing literature are relevant in a grassroots context: the importance of building networks, managing expectations and the significance of external ‘landscape’ pressures, particularly at the level of national-type. However, our findings suggest that existing theories do not fully capture the complexity of this type of innovation: we find a diverse field addressing a range of societal systems (money, welfare, education, health, consumerism), and showing increasing fragmentation (as opposed to consolidation and standardisation); furthermore, there is little evidence of formalised learning taking place but this has not hampered movement growth. We conclude that grassroots innovations develop and diffuse in quite different ways to conventional innovations, and that niche theories require adaptation to the civil society context

High-resolution FTIR spectroscopy and analysis of the Ka = 0 ← 1 subbands of the fundamentals ν3 and ν6 of the dimer (HF)2

We report new far-infrared spectra of (HF)2 obtained by high resolution long-path Fourier Transform-Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. The origins of the two tunneling components of the Ka= 0 ← 1 subband of the in-plane symmetric bending fundamental ν3 were found to be at 450.4546 cm−1 (Γt: A+ ← B+) and at 451.4583 cm−1 (B+ ← A+), and of the Ka= 0 ← 1 subband of the out-of-plane bending fundamental ν6 at 382.0802 cm−1 (A+ ← A+) and at 383.2245 cm−1 (B+ ← B+). The Ka= 0 term values with respect to the ground state Γt = A+ term are 486.9442 cm−1 for the A+ and 486.8834 cm−1 for the B+ tunneling levels of ν3. They are 417.5053 cm−1 for the A− and 419.7140 cm−1 for the B− vibration-tunneling sublevels of ν6. The results are discussed in relation to full-dimensional quantum dynamics and predictions based on recent ab initio calculations and our empirically refined potential energy hypersurfaces. Graphical abstract

Prospects for radical emissions reduction through behaviour and lifestyle change

Over the past two decades, scholars and practitioners across the social sciences, in policy and beyond have proposed, trialled and developed a wide range of theoretical and practical approaches designed to bring about changes in behaviours and lifestyles that contribute to climate change. With the exception of the establishment of a small number of iconic behaviours such as recycling, it has however proved extremely difficult to bring about meaningful transformations in personal greenhouse gas emissions at either the individual or societal level, with multiple reviews now pointing to the limited efficacy of current approaches. We argue that the majority of approaches designed to achieve mitigation have been constrained by the need to operate within prevailing social scientific, economic and political orthodoxies which have precluded the possibility of non-marginal change. In this paper we ask what a truly radical approach to reducing personal emissions would look like from social science perspectives which challenge the unstated assumptions severely limiting action to date, and which explore new alternatives for change. We emphasise the difficulties likely to impede the instituting of genuinely radical societal change regarding climate change mitigation, whilst proposing ways that the ground could be prepared for such a transformation to take place

Roadmap on STIRAP applications

STIRAP (stimulated Raman adiabatic passage) is a powerful laser-based method, usually involving two photons, for efficient and selective transfer of populations between quantum states. A particularly interesting feature is the fact that the coupling between the initial and the final quantum states is via an intermediate state, even though the lifetime of the latter can be much shorter than the interaction time with the laser radiation. Nevertheless, spontaneous emission from the intermediate state is prevented by quantum interference. Maintaining the coherence between the initial and final state throughout the transfer process is crucial. STIRAP was initially developed with applications in chemical dynamics in mind. That is why the original paper of 1990 was published in The Journal of Chemical Physics. However, from about the year 2000, the unique capabilities of STIRAP and its robustness with respect to small variations in some experimental parameters stimulated many researchers to apply the scheme to a variety of other fields of physics. The successes of these efforts are documented in this collection of articles. In Part A the experimental success of STIRAP in manipulating or controlling molecules, photons, ions or even quantum systems in a solid-state environment is documented. After a brief introduction to the basic physics of STIRAP, the central role of the method in the formation of ultracold molecules is discussed, followed by a presentation of how precision experiments (measurement of the upper limit of the electric dipole moment of the electron or detecting the consequences of parity violation in chiral molecules) or chemical dynamics studies at ultralow temperatures benefit from STIRAP. Next comes the STIRAP-based control of photons in cavities followed by a group of three contributions which highlight the potential of the STIRAP concept in classical physics by presenting data on the transfer of waves (photonic, magnonic and phononic) between respective waveguides. The works on ions or ion strings discuss options for applications, e.g. in quantum information. Finally, the success of STIRAP in the controlled manipulation of quantum states in solid-state systems, which are usually hostile towards coherent processes, is presented, dealing with data storage in rare-earth ion doped crystals and in nitrogen vacancy (NV) centers or even in superconducting quantum circuits. The works on ions and those involving solid-state systems emphasize the relevance of the results for quantum information protocols. Part B deals with theoretical work, including further concepts relevant to quantum information or invoking STIRAP for the manipulation of matter waves. The subsequent articles discuss the experiments underway to demonstrate the potential of STIRAP for populating otherwise inaccessible high-lying Rydberg states of molecules, or controlling and cooling the translational motion of particles in a molecular beam or the polarization of angular-momentum states. The series of articles concludes with a more speculative application of STIRAP in nuclear physics, which, if suitable radiation fields become available, could lead to spectacular results