Sustainable Consumption Institute

Theories of social practice offer a new theoretical perspective to behaviour change, providing fresh insights and novel targets for intervention. Social practices become the central unit of analysis and intervention – rather than individuals or other analytical categories such as norms and values. This perspective re-frames the question, from “How do we change individuals’ behaviours?” to “How do we change social practices?” Understanding the configuration of the components that make up practices and the dynamic relations between practices thus becomes a core task of analysis. Conventional behaviour change strategies primarily draw on a voluntaristic and individualistic model of behaviour. Social practice theory argues this model structurally overestimates the role of choice in routine behaviour and fundamentally underestimates the extent to which individuals’ autonomous action is constrained by infrastructures, institutions, conventions and access to resources. A practice theoretical reframing of (sustainable) consumption stresses that most environmentally significant consumption occurs in the pursuit of social practices (for example, sharing a meal or playing sport), not as consumption per se. The chapter draws out the policy implications for behaviour change and suggests three complementary models for interventions informed by social practice theory: re-crafting the components of practices; substituting practices; and changing how practices interlock.

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