10-year change toward (non-)sustainable consumption: practices, values, and role of close personal relationships

What are practitioners’ socio-economic profiles when it comes to practices that impact the environment and relate to food consumption, daily mobility and energy consumption at home? Which inequalities are observable? Furthermore, how did these practices change, or not, during the last ten years? Who did change in a more sustainable direction, who did so in a less sustainable direction and who did not change at all? For which practice(s)? What are the values and motivations given to explain such changes, or the absence thereof? Did close personal relationships play a role in bringing about these changes? Is it possible to quantify this role? These questions will be answered thanks to a very recent quantitative survey with 1785 respondents who were contacted mainly via municipality-based Facebook groups. The survey was realised with an Internet-based questionnaire in French-speaking Belgium in November-December 2014. The sample characteristics will be compared to relevant census data (2011) in order to evaluate the sample’s representativeness. Social practice theories (Schatzki, 1998; Reckwitz, 2002; Warde, 2005) are the main component of the conceptual framework. By studying the practices’ careers and carriers, trajectories towards more sustainable practices in daily life are outlined.