ABSTRACT
A change in lifestyle is often necessary in order to reduce humanity’s excessive consumption of resources to a sustainable level. However, because lifestyles vary greatly between individuals – even when they live in the same sociocultural context – we need to understand the main determinants of people’s sustainable performance. Whether a person will perform a specific sustainable behaviour or not (for example, buying organic products) depends on the specific behavioural costs of the behaviour (for example, required effort) and on a particular person’s environmental attitude level (his or her motivation to protect the environment). Thus, reducing the behavioural costs, for example, by incentivising organic products and increasing one’s environmental attitude, can promote sustainable behaviour in individuals. However, in the effort to promote sustainable lifestyles, it is not efficient to tackle the costs of one behaviour at a time. Only a significant boost in people’s environmental attitude will eventually lead to necessary lifestyle changes. We conclude that sustainable societies need both (a) conditions that facilitate sustainable behaviour, and (b) individuals who are distinctly committed to sustainability. This is because the choice of ambitious sustainability goals by politicians and the establishment of favourable conditions for sustainable lifestyles by policy-makers require the support of a sustainability-minded populace in democratic pluralistic societies.
