Sustainable Consumption

The course will be lectured next time Autumn2010
This course addresses both the analysis of consumer behaviour and the assessment of environmental impacts of household consumption. On the conceptual side, students learn how social sciences, especially psychology and marketing research address consumer behaviour. The course addresses attempts to influence consumers to behave in a more environmentally responsible way, illuminating the role of motives, knowledge and skills, habits, and external conditions (including infrastructure). Consumers are addressed as active goal-setting and goal-striving individuals, members of smaller and larger collectives, users of technology, and as processors of information. On the assessment side, the course addresses the use of life-cycle assessment and input-output analysis to model the environmental profile of a household. Household budgets are reviewed and the most environmentally important consumer expenditure items are identified. The results of econometric studies of consumer environmental impacts are reviewed. Options for change commonly proposed to and by the households themselves are reviewed for their potentials in lowering environmental impacts. Potentials in the short and long run are identified.

A comprehensive understanding of household environmental impacts and of behavioural and social factors that affect consumption. A good command of the literature.

This course is taught as a 2-week seminar. The course is part of the project Summer School in Industrial Ecology. The course requires a quite extensive review of the literature and the students must read an idenfied part of the reader before the seminar. Various forms of discussion, experiments and role play are used as teaching forms.