A collaboration between The University of Manchester, Edinburgh University, Essex University, Lancaster University and Leeds University with Fellowships based at Cardiff University, Queens University Belfast and The University of Salford
Theoretical Development & Integration
Overview
This project integrates the findings of empirical projects in order to develop a coherent theoretical and practical position for SPRG as a whole. It will draw out emerging themes from the SPRG work programme and investigate them in more detail, making connections across different domains of practice, and identifying (and addressing) gaps in the research. The project is comprised of three core areas of research:
- A review and analysis of secondary literature on a selection of historical examples of attempts to stimulate behaviour change, including smoking, prohibition, re-cycling, and others that are directly associated with the empirical domains that we will study. This historical component of the research is intended to provide important context for analysing contemporary and ongoing initiatives to affect change in consumer practices.
- Develop and communicate a framework for comparing the range of policy interventions that operate at macro, meso, and micro levels across different geographical regions. In addition to exploring which policies appear most effective, this component of the research explores capacity for transferring and replicating best practice across different regions, contexts and domains.
- Construct a coherent theoretical and conceptual position, combining insights from across the social scientific disciplines to make a distinctive and durable intellectual contribution to debates and understandings about shifting practices of consumption. This will involve analysis of multilevel processes that shape practices within the three domains of daily life that SPRG research explores, and comparison across those domains of practice at the meso level. The objective is to provide a systematic analysis of the key processes through which practices emerge, stabilize, change and decline.
The research outputs of this project will make a significant contribution to current social scientific and policy-related debates about how habits are formed, reformed and change, and what the institutional drivers of such change are.
Research Team:
Principal Investigator: Andrew McMeekin
Co-Investigator: Dale Southerton
Co-Investigator: Elizabeth Shove
Research Associate: Nicola Spurling
