Persisting Change - Why do programmes addressing behaviour change fail to create long-term change for sustainable consumption

Sammanfattning: As we grapple with the existential threat of global climate change and biodiversity collapse, there is a growing recognition to address the ever-growing levels of consumption. There is an urgent need to clamp down on the excessive levels of lifestyle emissions fuelled by individuals in the developed world along with the growing middle class in the developing parts for us to have any chances of having a just transition to a carbon-neutral future. For this purpose, the concept of sustainable consumption is paramount. However, mainstream discourses on sustainable consumption have focused on techno-efficiency measures, which have failed to reduce emissions and resource consumption at the scale which is required. Thus, there is a requirement for reducing consumption at absolute levels. To tackle this consumption from individuals, several programmes addressing behaviour changing have been created and tested based on a variety of theories and disciplinary perspectives. Conventional programmes have focused on information provision or economic incentives as the method for changing behaviours succeeded by approaches based on behavioural economics. However, one thing has been common in these interventions/programmes and that is their short-term success. None of the programmes created has been able to create a lasting change in the behaviour of individuals and there is an urgent need for such programmes as we do not have to change behaviours, we have to make sure that the behaviours stay changed or the change is persistent. This study tries to explore some of the causes for the failure of behaviour change interventions and tries to explore how programmes that can create persistent changes in behaviour be designed. For the fulfilment of this aim, the thesis has followed a deductive approach utilising a literature review and qualitative interviews to dig deeper and understand the causes for failure of programmes addressing behaviour change and using that knowledge to see how better programmes with longevity as a focus be designed. The framework COM-B is utilised to structure the findings for designing better programmes. This paper presents a first attempt to structure the knowledge around Sustainable Consumption using the COM-B framework.