Exploring the Attitudes-Action Gap in Household Resource Consumption: Does “Environmental Lifestyle” Segmentation Align with Consumer Behavior?

Trajectories of consumption across a wide spectrum of urban services and resources in high income societies continue to trend upwards [1,2]. At the same time, attempts to create “wedges” linked to the introduction of social and economic policies, new processes and products, etc. [3,4], capable of underpinning a significant reduction in consumption, underpin much contemporary research. Many prospective sustainability “wedges” are found in the literature and include: They cover the spectrum of research from sustainable production to sustainable consumption-from the supply side to the demand side. A conceptual framework capable of being used to “map” consumption research is presented in Figure 1. It suggests that demand-side studies-the focus of this paper-will centre on better understanding the role of social and demographic, as well as behavioural attributes associated with individuals and households and the contextual settings related to their dwelling, urban location or social milieu. Demand-side research also needs to probe why studies of urban resource use [5,6,7,8] are fi nding a gap between attitudes and actions; individuals are not behaving in a manner that is congruent with their stated attitudes and intentions. Here, a major question mark continues to surround the issue of whether individuals or households in high income societies are prepared to make voluntary changes to their consumption practices in order that the 21st century has some prospect for a more sustainable and equitable world. This necessitates a drilling down into the structural and behavioural attributes of individuals to explore those factors, both intrinsic and extrinsic, linked to consumption [9]. It can be argued that behaviour change on the part of individuals and the households with which they are associated holds the prospect for a much faster rate of sustainability transformation than supply-side technological innovation of key infrastructures and services (e.g., energy, water, waste or in the redesign of built environments). Radical change is possible in both these arenas, but the timescale required is considerable, hence the increasing interest being shown by governments in behaviour change policies and programs [10,11].