Going beyond efficiency: including altruistic motives in behavioral models for sustainability transitions to address sufficiency

Abstract

Sustainability transitions require altered individual behaviors. Policies aimed at changing people's consumption behavior are designed according to efficiency, consistency, and sufficiency principles. Taking into account shortcomings of the first two principles, this paper specifically addresses the sufficiency principle. Sufficiency policies are not very popular due to the fear that they may impede quality of life. This fear might be eased when highlighting the motivational side of sustainable behavior, such as the wish to care for future generations and the world's poor. This article uses the capability approach (CA), developed primarily by Nobel-laureate economist Amartya Sen (1987a) and philosopher Martha Nussbaum (1993, 2000), to a) include the differentiation between self-and other-oriented goals and behavior, b) build on its demonstrated success in assessing quality of life, and c) assess the sustainability of behavior and policies. These three facets make CA suitable to analyze the effectiveness of sufficiency policies on sustainability and quality of life. To better understand the motivational side of sustainable behavior, CA is here for the first time enriched through approaches from environmental psychology. This enables us to highlight the idea of intrinsic empowerment as a building block for sufficiency policies. We close the article by highlighting further avenues for research.

Linking Transitions to Sustainability: A Study of the Societal Effects of Transition Management

“…Thus, we assume that second-order learning is one aspect of voluntary behavioural change as well as the development of innovative and successful solutions to persistent local problems. Schäpke and Rauschmayer [69] hold that (social) learning can be understood as one major source of empowerment (e.g., via new skills).…”

“…Overall, the social learning process should increase the transition mindedness of the people involved [70]. Social learning, in this regard, can contribute to sustainability by raising awareness of sustainability-related problems as well as by increasing the feeling of responsibility and capacity of people to react to these sustainability problems (cf., [69]). It can also function as a process of spreading sustainable practices from alternative niches to the broader societal mainstream (the regime) [24].…”

“…At an individual psychological level, empowerment processes do offer the possibility to increase the motivation and capacity of individuals to act sustainably. Here, Schäpke and Rauschmayer [69] highlight the role of values and awareness when it comes to how people 'use' a respective empowerment: engaging for sustainability or not. Engagement is likely if a felt empowerment is linked to an increase in awareness of and felt responsibility for sustainable behaviour-or simply, if sustainability-oriented actors feel empowered.…”

“…(3) Raising awareness on sustainability-related problems [56,58,69,70]; (→em 6) (4) Increasing the feeling of responsibility and capacity of people to react to these sustainability problems [54][55][56]58,69], e.g., by overcoming unsustainable lock-in situations [31]; (→em 6,7) (5) Allowing for the development of joint visions in direction of sustainability [32,34]; (6) Allowing for the development of collective action in direction of sustainability [29,67,68] (→sc 7); (7) Spreading of (sustainability) insights from individuals and groups to wider groups is possible [15,22,24] (→em 9, sc 4).…”

“…(6) When process of (psychological) empowerment are linked to increases in awareness and motivation on/for sustainability (→sl 3,4)) [69]; (7) If psychological empowerment raises capacity to react to sustainability problems (→sl 4)) [13,69], (8) Giving sustainability interests more decision-making power; (9) Contributing to changing structures, if new structures are more sustainable, e.g., sustainable niches become mainstream (transformative power) [40,49,73,109], e.g., when frontrunners trend set sustainable alternatives [23,24,85,86]. (→sl 3,4,7, sc 7).…”