How Can Societies Share Responsibility for More Sustainable Lifestyles?

The belief that consumers can push market actors towards greater sustainability through their purchasing choices is widespread. It is a narrative that locates responsibility for sustainable consumption with the individual. However, this overlooks the role of both corporations, which encourage overconsumption through their business practices, and political actors, who engage in climate governance yet shy away from implementing policies that would enable sustainable consumption. Disentangling these discourses around responsibility in climate governance is crucial to enabling changes for more sustainable consumption patterns and lifestyles. A new study by the RIFS team from the EU project 1.5° Lifestyles, published in the journal Consumption and Society, analyses these discourses using a multi-method research approach. The research draws on co-creative stakeholder labs with representatives from governments, companies and households as well as expert interviews and Delphi workshops that took place in five European countries: Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Spain and Sweden.

The study honed in on three key questions: To whom and on the basis of what arguments and narratives do European climate governance stakeholders assign responsibility to which actors? To what extent can a responsibility ping-pong – resulting in the collective evasion of responsibility – be identified? And to what extent can a potential for shared responsibility be identified that would enable societies to move forward?

"The way in which responsibility is assigned to individuals in their role as consumers does not make sense," says study author Lea Melissa Becker. “In this narrative, individuals are expected to take responsibility for sustainability, while the broader structural context of their lifestyle choices is ignored. It holds individuals responsible for systemic outcomes over which they have only limited influence, leading to frustration and blame shifting. It is, ultimately, an unfruitful narrative.”  

How can societies overcome responsibility ping-pong?

According to the study’s authors, fostering shared responsibility between different societal actors could potentially create the basis for more effective climate governance and promote lifestyles that are compatible with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target. The study draws on stakeholder perspectives on responsibility to highlight deep-seated barriers to transformations in European democracies. It also reveals a range of more specific concerns relating, for instance, to authoritarian tendencies and greenwashing. The authors argue that policy makers, researchers, businesses, households and civil society must reframe and embrace sustainability as an overriding imperative. According to the study, real change will hinge on a shift towards shared responsibility rather than holding consumers responsible for the climate crisis.

The genuine, diverse and deep participation of individuals as citizens will be crucial to this shift, together with the adoption of systems of public accountability that enable the organisation of shared responsibility and profound changes to the global economic system in order to move beyond the dominant growth paradigm and adopt people-centred economic practices. This will require shifting towards a shared, justice-oriented and forward-looking concept of responsibility that is embedded in social norms and focused on future outcomes. 
 

Publication:
Pia Mamut, Doris Fuchs, Lea Becker, Karlis Laksevics, Halliki Kreinin, and Janis Brizga: From responsibility ping-pong to shared responsibility for 1.5° lifestyles? Examining European stakeholder perspectives, Consumption and society. doi:10.1332/27528499Y2024D000000039.