Mobilising Resources for More Sustainable Lifestyles: Views of Households and Local Authorities

This contribution examines the strategy taken by Global Action Plan (GAP) to promote and sup­port the development of environmentally sustainable lifestyles by combining various communica­tion and diffusion instruments. Potentials and effects of the instruments applied are discussed with regard to co-operation between municipalities and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) like GAP. Two studies combine a bottom up and top down perspective: The system dynamics per­spective on the municipality is complemented by a study of the viewpoints of the individual citizen and household. Results indicate that a combination of communication instruments with other policy instruments such as economic and command and control instruments is well suited to lead a municipality towards sustainability by improving the preconditions for environmentally sound citizen behaviour. The focus is on the ecological and social dimensions of sustainability. Due to their common relevance for overall life goals and quality of life our findings further sug­gest that these two dimensions can sometimes be improved by one and the same measure e.g. in traffic safety.