Sustainable Consumption Governance and Behavior
Summary
Sustainable consumption governance and behaviour encompass the policies, institutions and practices aimed at aligning consumer choices and production systems with environmental limits and social wellbeing. Governance approaches combine regulatory measures, economic incentives and informational instruments to shape markets and societal norms. Behavioural dimensions draw on psychology, social practice theory and political economy to understand how habits, values and infrastructures interact. Key strategies include improving resource efficiency, promoting sufficiency by curbing excessive consumption and encouraging consistency through circular business models. Effective policy mixes recognise the interplay between individual agency and structural contexts, addressing rebound effects, distributional equity and cultural frames. Globally, countries have experimented with citizen assemblies, fiscal reforms, sectoral regulations and voluntary standards to steer consumption towards defined ‘corridors’ that balance human needs against planetary boundaries. Interventions range from product labelling and nudges to binding limits on resource extraction, highlighting the need for multi-level governance that integrates local innovation with international commitments. Advances in digital platforms, collaborative consumption and business redesign offer practical pathways, while enduring challenges include overcoming vested interests, behavioural lock-in and governance fragmentation.
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Sustainable Consumption Governance and Behavior publication trend
The graph below shows the total number of articles in sustainable consumption governance and behavior across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).
Technical terms
Sufficiency: Strategy emphasising meeting human needs within ecological limits by reducing excessive consumption rather than relying solely on technical efficiency.
Decoupling: Separation of economic growth from environmental impacts, aiming to lower resource use or emissions without sacrificing prosperity.
Behavioural governance: Use of insights from behavioural science to design policy instruments that steer choices towards sustainability.
Consumption corridor: Conceptual band of minimum and maximum resource use that secures wellbeing while respecting planetary boundaries.
Nudge: Subtle policy intervention leveraging cognitive biases to encourage sustainable decisions without restricting individual freedom.
References
- Citizens call for sufficiency and regulation — A comparison of European citizen assemblies and National Energy and Climate Plans. Energy Research & Social Science (2023).
- Sufficiency transitions: A review of consumption changes for environmental sustainability. Journal of Cleaner Production (2021).
- Sustainable consumption communication: A review of an emerging field of research. Journal of Cleaner Production (2021).
- How can businesses drive sufficiency? The business for sufficiency framework. Sustainable Production and Consumption (2021).
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