RESOLVE | Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment

Summary

The overarching aim of this £5m research project was to explore the complex relationship between people’s lifestyles, societal values and the environment. In particular, RESOLVE provided robust social science evidence base for policymakers seeking to understand and to influence the behaviours and practices of ‘energy consumers’ in the light of climate change.

At the time the proposal for RESOLVE was first offered to the ESRC in mid-2004, the principal investigator Prof Tim Jackson was in the final stages of an ESRC fellowship entitled Towards a Social Psychology of Sustainable Consumption. The foundational ideas for the RESOLVE work programme emerged in part from this fellowship and in part from existing collaborations between Prof Jackson and the other co-investigators. The fellowship had identified a clear need to connect existing social science understandings about lifestyle and consumer motivation to the emerging debates about energy and climate change. Energy consumption and the associated carbon emissions are driven as much by the aspirations of ordinary people as they are by the technology of energy supply. Questions of affiliation, distinction, status, identity, meaning and habit are as relevant to climate change mitigation as are questions about motive power, thermal comfort, fuel demand and conversion efficiency. 

RESOLVE made a timely and innovative contribution to national and international debates about energy, climate change and sustainability. In one sense it pioneered a research area that was almost waiting to emerge. At the time when the RESOLVE team commenced their work programme, in May 2006, there were few initiatives of comparable size (around 30 people) either in the UK or abroad, although the need for such initiatives had begun to be articulated. In spite of these emerging realisations, there was little, in the early days of RESOLVE’s work, in the way of either academic research or policy framework that linked social science understandings of lifestyles and values directly with the emerging demands of sustainability. Certainly, RESOLVE was unique enough in its aims and focus to attract and retain people’s attention as a substantial and innovative research initiative.

During the course of RESOLVE’s grant, an increasing number of research and policy initiatives began to address questions of lifestyles and sustainability. The subject of ‘behaviour change’ achieved an even wider attention in policy circles, particularly following the publication in the UK of ‘Nudge’ (Thaler and Sunstein 2008). Drawing partly on work carried out under Prof Jackson’s ESRC fellowship, the Institute of Governance produced an influential pamphlet entitled MindSpace – an acronym for the factors deemed to influence people’s behaviour. In 2009, the House of Lords launched an inquiry on behaviour change and the Cabinet Office set up a new behavioural sciences unit. Not only did RESOLVE pre-figure and sometimes stimulate these new initiatives, but the team participated in many of them and contributed to the widening discussions about sustainable lifestyles.

The period during which RESOLVE was operating proved to be one of dramatic change. As the final report demonstrates, RESOLVE not only observed and engaged in research about those changes, it also participated actively in the politics of change. The thematic aims that motivated the formation of the research group remained broadly intact. But changing circumstances provided a new set of challenges to be negotiated and a fertile basis from which to build an important portfolio of research.