Welcome to the ESRC Research Group on Lifestyles Values and Environment.

RESOLVE CONFERENCE

Sustainable Lives? The challenges of low-carbon living in a changing economic climate

18 June 2009

RESOLVE is a new and exciting collaboration located entirely within the University of Surrey, involving four internationally acclaimed departments: the Centre for Environmental Strategy, the Surrey Energy Economics Centre, the Environmental Psychology Research Group and the Department of Sociology.

Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of the research councils’ energy programme, RESOLVE aims to unravel the complex links between lifestyles, values and the environment.

In particular, the group will provide robust, evidence-based advice to policy-makers in the UK and elsewhere who are seeking to understand and to influence the behaviours and practices of ‘energy consumers’.

Ours is a truly inter-disciplinary research programme arranged around six thematic research strands:

Carbon Footprinting: developing the tools to find out which bits of people's lifestyles and practices generate how much energy consumption (and carbon emissions).

Psychology of Energy Behaviours: concentrating on the social psychological influences on energy-related behaviours, including the role of identity, and testing interventions aimed at change.

Sociology of Lifestyles: focusing on the sociological aspects of lifestyles and the possibilities of lifestyle change, exploring the role of values and the creation and maintenance of meaning.

Household change over time: working with individual households to understand how they respond to the demands of climate change and negotiate new, low-carbon lifestyles and practices.

Lifestyle Scenarios: exploring the potential for reducing the energy consumption (and carbon emissions) associated with a variety of lifestyle scenarios over the next two to three decades.

Energy/Carbon Governance: reviewing the implications of a low carbon society for governance, and investigating, in particular, the role of community in stimulating long-term lifestyle change.