Between Distributed Agency and Choice Architecture: Comparing Nudge and Practice Theoretical Approaches to Changing Consumption

Abstract

How to change consumption patterns remains one of the most wicked global sustainability challenges, and it is increasingly acknowledged that such wicked problems require interdisciplinary solutions. In this chapter, we ask what can be learnt from contrasting two approaches to sustainable consumption that only to a very limited extent interact. First, psychological approaches to consumption have been immensely influential concerning individual behavioural change, particularly through their theorisations of ‘nudge’ and ‘choice architecture’. Second, social practice theories (SPTs) have obtained a dominant position in sociocultural approaches to consumption, focusing on how bodily, social and material elements combine into taken-for-granted daily routines that make up shared patterns of (unsustainable) social life. Interestingly, despite the theoretical approaches' different ontologies and analytical loci, nudge theory and practice theories seem to end up in surprisingly similar recommendations for facilitating sustainable change. In this chapter, we explore the differences and similarities of two theoretical bodies that rarely interact, with the aim to explore the room for breaking out of disciplinary silos and investigate potentials for cross-field pollination. We use the empirical case of continuity and change in meat consumption, but the dynamics discussed are arguably relevant for all fields of consumption. We demonstrate that while cross-pollination between nudge and practice theories could potentially increase political attention as well as be used to deliver more precise and tailored interventions, the diverging ontological underpinnings of these directions of thought significantly reduce the potential for further co-development.

Citation

Adolfsson, J.S., Hansen, A. and Wethal, U. (2024), "Between Distributed Agency and Choice Architecture: Comparing Nudge and Practice Theoretical Approaches to Changing Consumption", Jacobsen, E., Strandbakken, P., Dulsrud, A. and Skuland, S.E. (Ed.) Consumers and Consumption in Comparison (Comparative Social Research, Vol. 37), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 189-213. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0195-631020240000037009