Resource use of low-income households — Approach for defining a decent lifestyle?

Lettenmeier, Michael; Lähteenoja, Satu; Hirvilammi, Tuuli; Laakso, Senja

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2013.11.048

Cited by 13 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…In this study, only one household had changed to renewable or green energy (thermal heating), an aspect under the influence of consumers which has in previous research been recognised as having a significant effect on the overall natural resource consumption of households (e.g. Kotakorpi et al., 2008; also Lettenmeier et al., 2014). If the studied households were to ‘shop around’ (invite tenders) for electricity providers, it was for financial grounds, not for environmental accounts.…”

Section: Research Materials and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 98%

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‘A bigger living room required a bigger TV’: Doing and negotiating necessity in well-to-do households

Aro

2017

Journal of Consumer Culture

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This article investigates how necessity is ‘done’ and ‘negotiated’ in Finnish well-to-do households’ domestic practices and asks whether and how households are engaged in sustainable practices. The main research material consists of 14 in-depth interviews. In this study, necessities are viewed as something that householders perceive they ‘cannot manage without’ in their normal domestic daily life. At collective level, necessity is considered to construct ‘expectation horizons’: what is considered normal for people to have and to desire and how to live their lives normally within a certain socio-economic frame. With a novel theoretical approach, this article views necessity through three kinds of agentic capacities: distributed agency in the material world, socio-cultural surroundings and mental and bodily dispositions. This article contributes to the ongoing discussion on the problematics of rising living standards and household sustainability efforts. The findings show that in carrying out daily life, the leeway provided by higher income and education collides with the internalised ethos of ‘not wasting’ (habitus), lack of seeing real possibilities and often blurred views of responsibilities and power to pursue sustainability. Sustainability is seen as distant to daily life and as an inconvenience that requires familiarisation, time and/or money. It also lacks practical meaning. Instead, domestic necessity contributes to personal and family well-being and effortlessness and straightforwardness in daily life. This article provides three key conclusions. First, any vision or innovation for pursuing sustainability is inadequate if it does not carry meaning in everyday functionality. Second, it is important to critically account for the ‘stickiness’ (capacities for resisting change) of non-negotiable parts of domestic practices with embedded consumption of materials, water and electricity; third, based on the previous two, research and policy should take seriously the difficulty of thinking or seeing outside of the ‘expectation horizons’ that incorporate the co-evolving aspirations and conventions.

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Section: Research Materials and Methodologymentioning

confidence: 98%

“…In a Finnish study on environmental loading of households, Lettenmeier et al. (2014) discovered that there is great variety in overall material use among higher income groups, which indicates that the environmental burden need not increase along with increasing income.…”

Section: Background and Theoretical Premisesmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘A bigger living room required a bigger TV’: Doing and negotiating necessity in well-to-do households

Aro

2017

Journal of Consumer Culture

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“…Within consumption corridors, individuals are able to live a good life without compromising the ability of others to do the same, today and in the future (Di Giulio and Fuchs 2014). The concept of consumption corridors relates to Raworth's "doughnut economics" (2017) and the notion of "environmental space" as conceptualized by Spangenberg (2002), including studies that tackle upper and lower limits to consumption (Laakso 2012;Lettenmeier et al 2014). We posit that living in consumption corridors can lead to sustainable wellbeing.…”

Section: Conceptual Frameworkmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing laundry in consumption corridors: wellbeing and everyday life

Godin

Laakso

Sahakian

2020

Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy

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In this article, we explore the possibilities for a transformation toward more sustainable energy usage by engaging with mundane activities, such as doing the laundry. Across European households, laundry practices rely on social norms and material arrangements, which makes these practices rather "sticky" and resistant to change. Through the lens of consumption corridors, and accounting for wellbeing in relation to the basic needs of participation, health, and autonomy, we study laundry practices and their transformation in 73 Finnish and Swiss households that took part in a challenge to reduce their weekly wash cycles by half over a four-week period in autumn 2018. By using both qualitative and quantitative data, we analyze how participants defined minimum and maximum standards for cleanliness and convenience, for themselves and for others, over the course of the challenge period. Specifically, we consider how the sequencing of tasks associated with "doing the laundry" changed, as well as the significance of social relations and sensations in representations of social norms. The participants' experiences helped uncover how setting limits toward consumption corridors can be achieved, whereby reductions in consumption can result in sustainable wellbeing.

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“…Another study formed part of the project 'Back to basics: Consumption and basic income security' coordinated by the Social Insurance Institution of Finland. This study analyzed the material footprints of 18 single households living on basic social security (Hirvilammi et al 2013;Laakso, 2011;Lettenmeier et al 2012;Lettenmeier et al 2014a). Of the 45 households examined in these studies, 44 exceeded the sustainable material footprint of eight tonnes by a factor of 1.5 to 15.…”

Section: From Problem Assessment To Vision Development -Lessons From mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Even if we can address most of the resource use in the human economy to the consumption of individual households at some point, households can directly influence their material consumption only partially (Kopsakangas-Savolainen and Juutinen, 2013;Lettenmeier et al, 2014a). Existing infrastructure and prevailing services determine a basic level of resource use that exceeds sustainability limits even among minimum income receivers in an industrialized country such as Finland (Hirvilammi et al, 2013).…”

Section: Introduction -Reducing Global Resource Use By Local Activitiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Household-level transition methodology towards sustainable material footprints

Laakso

Lettenmeier

2016

Journal of Cleaner Production

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, +358 50 448 0940) Highlights • A new methodology for studying sustainability transition at household level • The methodology covers assessment, vision development, experiments and upscaling • Measuring and reducing material footprints according to the MIPS concept • Households developed their own roadmaps towards sustainable resource use • Relevant experiments were tested and future services simulated Abstract This paper presents a new household-level methodology for transition towards sustainability. The methodology includes measuring the resource use of households on a micro level, testing relevant measures towards a one-planet resource use, and developing mainstreaming options in cooperation with households and providers of services, products, and infrastructures. We use the MIPS (Material Input Per unit of Service) method to calculate the use of natural resources and concentrate on the material footprint as an aggregated indicator for the overall use of material resources. With HST (Household-level Sustainability Transition) methodology, we extend the material footprint methodology from just measuring household resource use to developing visions, conducting experiments, as well as learning and upscaling, all of which contribute to the whole Transition-Enabling Cycle. Results from the first application of the HST methodology on five households in Jyväskylä, Finland, show that it is possible to achieve a significantly more sustainable level of consumption by a relatively few changes in everyday living. Achieving a one-planet use of material resources, however, also requires systemic changes.

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Resource use of low-income households — Approach for defining a decent lifestyle?

Cited by 13 publications

References 5 publications

‘A bigger living room required a bigger TV’: Doing and negotiating necessity in well-to-do households

‘A bigger living room required a bigger TV’: Doing and negotiating necessity in well-to-do households

Doing laundry in consumption corridors: wellbeing and everyday life

Household-level transition methodology towards sustainable material footprints

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