Project Team:
Irmgard Schultz
Ines Weller
Field of research
Research Area:
Everyday Life Ecology, Energy, Consumption
about the Institute
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A Survey of Social Scientific Research (Preliminary Study)
At the UNCED Conference in Rio in 1992, the government of the Federal
Republic of Germany was among the signers of Agenda 21, whose Chapter 4
refers to the necessity of developing and implementing sustainable
patterns of consumption. With this as background, the preliminary study
"Sustainable Consumption Patterns and Post-Material Lifestyles"
investigates the strengths and weaknesses of the results of social science
research with respect to sustainable patterns of consumption. To this end,
as a first step five scientific discourses (environmental awareness and
behavior; changed values; lifestyles; new models of prosperity; and
selected areas of environmental research) are surveyed with reference to
the goal of Chapter 4 of Agenda 21. The results are to be evaluated in a
second step with regard to their strategic meaning for sustainable
patterns of consumption that can be widely established. Finally, the
results of the evaluative survey are to be used to identify what further
social scientific environmental research needs to be done in support of
the widest, most efficient, possible sustainable patterns of consumption,
as well as developing more comprehensive research questions.
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