Overview
Content and purpose of the research project
The way people live and are mobile is associated with attitudes, cultural expressions, forms of social interaction, identifications and knowledge. Sociology has established theories and methods that make group-specific regularities and differences visible and has tied them in to lifestyle typologies. So, differences in terms of mobility and housing become recognizable as characteristic features of socio-cultural groups. This project identifies energy-consumption lifestyle groups in Lucerne's population and raises the question of their potential for sustainable behaviour. For this purpose, models from psychology and marketing are involved in an interdisciplinary approach. At the end, environmental agencies get a tool that has already been successfully used in marketing or prevention campaigns. The administration may discover potentials and needs towards more sustainable behaviour in Lucerne’s population and may include state-of-the-art communication strategies to stimulate more climate-conscious consumption, sustainable mobility and energy saving.
Scientific and social context of the research project
The research project combines sociological with behavioural and social psychological approaches. The methodology for the typing of lifestyle groups can be developed further to meet the needs of the administration. The project is on the one hand a significant contribution at the intersection of environmental sociology and environmental psychology and lays an important foundation for the necessary energy reduction with respect to the objectives of the “2000-Watt-society”.
