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Home / GAIA - Ecological Perspectives for Science and Society, Volume 23, Supplement 1

Open Access Sustainable Consumption – an Unwieldy Object of Research

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Nourishing ground of this GAIA special issue is the focal topic From Knowledge to Action – New Paths towards Sustainable Consumption funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). The introductory paper describes the synthesis process, which focused on fundamental conceptual and normative issues of sustainable consumption as an object of research, and summarises its main results – classification systems, conceptual structures, and clarifications of normative positions pertaining to four questions: how to conceive individual consumption, how to relate consumption and sustainability, how to assess sustainable consumption, and how to change individual consumption. It also explains how the individual papers of this issue under the headings Viewpoints and Reflection relate to these results.

Keywords: CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR; CONSUMPTION; DESIRES; INTER- AND TRANSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH; NEEDS; SUSTAINABILITY; SUSTAINABLE CONSUMPTION; SYNTHESIS PROCESS

Document Type: Research Article

Publication date: 01 July 2014

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  • GAIA is a peer-reviewed inter- and transdisciplinary journal for scientists and other interested parties concerned with the causes and analyses of environmental and sustainability problems and their solutions.

    Environmental problems cannot be solved by one academic discipline. The complex natures of these problems require cooperation across disciplinary boundaries. Since 1991, GAIA has offered a well-balanced and practice-oriented forum for transdisciplinary research. GAIA offers first-hand information on state of the art environmental research and on current solutions to environmental problems. Well-known editors, advisors, and authors work to ensure the high quality of the contributions found in GAIA and a unique transdisciplinary dialogue – in a comprehensible style.

    GAIA is an ISI-journal, listed in the Science Citation Index Expanded, Social Science Citation Index and in Current Contents/Social and Behavioral Sciences.

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