Providing people with information is considered an important first step in encouraging them to behave sustainably as it influences their consumption beliefs, attitudes and intentions. However, too much information can also complicate these processes and negatively affect behaviour. This is exacerbated when people have accepted the need to live a more sustainable lifestyle and attempt to enact its principles. Drawing on interview data with people committed to sustainability, we identify the contentious role of knowledge in further disrupting sustainable consumption ideals. (...) Here, knowledge is more than just information; it is familiarity and expertise or how information is acted upon. We find that more knowledge represents a source of dilemma, tension and paralysis. Our data reveal a dark side to people’s knowledge, leading to a ‘self-inflicted sustainable consumption paradox’ in their attempts to lead a sustainable consumption lifestyle. Implications for policy interventions are discussed. (shrink)

This article contributes to debates concerning the sexualization of culture in the European context by analysing shifts in contemporary forms of British women’s sexual sexual subjectivities in relation to consumer culture. The article employs a ‘heterotopological’ analysis of how space is materialized through history, power and discourse. A two-part analysis is employed that, first, maps the history of British sex shops in relation to two discourses of sexuality and consumption, namely ‘safe’ and ‘seedy’; and second, analyses how these discourses can (...) be taken up and negotiated by young women today, as evidenced in a focus group discussion on ‘Ann Summers’. It concludes that new directions and interesting insights into the intersections of space, power, gender and sexuality within neoliberal postfeminist shifts in feminine identity can be made by considering female-oriented sex shops as ‘postfeminist heterotopias’. (shrink)

Prolific research suggests identity associates with pro-environmental behaviours that are individual and/or group focused. Individual PEB is personally driven, self-reliant, and are conducted on one's own. Group focused PEB is other people-reliant and completed as part of a group. A wide range of identities have been related to PEBs. For example, a recent systematic qualitative review revealed 99 different types of identities studied in a PEB context. Most studies were correlational, few had an experimental design. However, the relationships between all (...) these identities and PEBs have so far not been tested quantitatively with meta-analytical techniques. As such, a clear overview of this field is currently lacking. Due to the diverse nature of the field, a priori hypotheses were not possible and relatively broad definitions of identity had to be used to encompass all types of identities and the diverse meanings of identity that have been included in PEB research. What prior theory did allow for was to assess the distinction between two main types of identity, namely how people label, describe, and recognise oneself individually, or as part of a group. Our overall goal was thus to assess the current state of knowledge on identities and PEBs. In 104 studies using a meta-regression following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses guidelines, our random-effects meta-analysis showed that the overall concept of identity associated with PEB with a medium Pearson's r. Furthermore, we found that individual identities associated more strongly with PEBs than group identities. The associations between individual and group identities were stronger when the identity and PEB were from the same category. Methodologically, the findings revealed that group identities and group PEBs were most strongly associated for self-reported rather than observed PEBs. Overall identity associated most strongly with group PEBs in the field rather than in the lab and in student- rather than non-student samples. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications. (shrink)