In recent years the urgent need to develop practical ways to address anthropogenic climate change has become increasingly clear. Work on developing forms of ‘sustainable consumption’ has provided compelling arguments about the nature of the difficulties entailed in seeking to address such environmental impacts by attempting to shift patterns of consumer behaviour. It is not sufficient to simply tell people ‘the facts’ and expect them to behave ‘sensibly’. Significantly, the issue of climate change brings additional challenges for policy-making which seeks to shift behaviour. These arise from the issue possessing a number of distinctive facets that make it difficult to create clear linkages between changes in behaviour and personal benefits e.g. the need for collective action to achieve individual benefit; the long time scales involved and therefore absence of immediate results; and the contested nature of the scientific issues.
A multiplicity of policy initiatives to address this matter are currently
planned, or are being piloted, within the continent of Europe, including local
initiatives concerned with Carbon offsetting; new methods of energy billing and
metering, like the introduction of ‘smart meters’; introducing cigarette-style
‘health warnings’ on advertisements for commodities and services like air
travel; road pricing; and embedding the principles of sustainability into school
curricula. Increasingly, policy-makers recognise that shifting behaviour is far
more than a matter of bridging the gap between educating consumers about the
impact of their behaviour, and changing that behaviour. Such behaviours are
embedded within a complex matrix of everyday associations, preferred ways of
life,
economic constraints, and emotional commitments.
In line with this recognition, policy initiatives now tend
to take a more sophisticated form than being simply about ‘public education’, and include elements of communication, advertising, incentives, and citizen engagement.
It seems indisputable that policy which seeks to address the diversity of consumer behaviours which have climate change impacts will be more effective in its design and implementation if it makes workable assumptions about likely impacts on consumer and other forms of lay behaviour. However, significantly, this is an area where the evidence base is not conclusive, and where the conceptual terrain – including as it does contributions from various areas of environmental studies, and from marketing, health studies, sociology, psychology and other disciplines – is highly contested.
In order to address these difficulties, we propose to take as our point of departure the increasingly large body of research and practical findings concerned with citizen engagement. The trend towards citizen engagement as a policy tool has developed significantly within many democratic countries over the last decade. The use of various forms of extended consultation, participation and deliberative involvement with members of the lay public has been advocated as a means to address a number of perceived difficulties of contemporary governance, including deficits of knowledge, trust and legitimacy.
Of great significance has been the recognition of the limits of the extent to which technical knowledge alone provides a suitable basis for the resolution of many decision-making questions concerned with innovation and technology management. In cases where the issue in question is associated with some degree of controversy, and conflicts exist in underlying values and motivations, difficulties arise in seeking to reconcile expert knowledge and the needs of the market with strongly held beliefs and commitments.