Sustainable Consumption Patterns and Post-Material Lifestyles

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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