Sustainable Lives: Food Choices as Politics and Lifestyle (funded until 2023)

Climate change and other environmental and social problems are increasingly bringing the unsustainability of our current lifestyles to the fore. The research interest of the working group “Sustainable lives” focusses on food choices as a case study of leading a more or less sustainable lifestyle. In comparison to other areas of human behavior, nutrition accounts for a high share of each person’s environmental impact. While experts and activists may, by and large, agree that eating less meat, more plants from more local, organic and fair production, wrapped in less plastic, and bought in portions that can actually be consumed rather than thrown away, would be a step towards a more sustainable way of life, this knowledge does not automatically translate into more sustainable behavior. In some countries and some sociocultural contexts, food choices may be changing, while, particularly in some emerging economies, it seems unclear whether society is heading towards more sustainable ways of life.

In this collaborative research endeavor, the drivers of food choices and how changing discourses, norms and attitudes about food relate to actual patterns of food consumption will be investigated. This question can only be tackled in a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach that looks at both, discourses about food and the everyday practices of food consumption.

In addition to the topic of food choices, we will enlarge our focus to other consumer decisions such as housing or mobility choices (traveling, car ownership, flying by plane). Overall, we are concerned with understanding how these decisions are embedded in and influenced by discourses about politics, identity and sustainability, and which other factors (habits, infrastructure, etc.) play a role.

Find out more about the previous work of the Research Group here.

• Invitation of guest researchers to both present their research in a public lecture series and to discuss it in working group workshops
• Organisation of a (semi-)annual joint workshop retreat of working group
• Outreach activities are carried out, e.g. through interviews and blog posts (see: www.climatematters.de)

• Prof. Dr. Michael Brüggemann
• Prof. Dr. Stefanie Kley
• Prof. Dr. Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw
• Prof. Dr. Grischa Perino
• Prof. Dr. Jannis Androutsopoulos
  Coordinator: Tetiana Dovbischuk

Schwickert, H. (2023). Paying for animal welfare labelling no matter what? A discrete choice experiment. European Review of Agricultural Economics, jbad027. https://academic.oup.com/erae/advance-article/doi/10.1093/erae/jbad027/7246626

Hoppe, I. & Kleinen-von Königslöw, K. (2023) “This is Part of Everything that is Wrong with the World” – A Comparative Analysis of Sustainability Framing in Social Media Discussions About Food in Five Countries, Environmental Communication, DOI: 10.1080/17524032.2023.2212136

Perino, G., & Schwickert, H. (2023). Animal welfare is a stronger determinant of public support for meat taxation than climate change mitigation in Germany. Nature Food, 4(2), 160-169. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43016-023-00696-y

Trübner, M., Nisic, N., Dunker, A. & Kley, S. (2022). Nachhaltiger Lebensmittelkonsum - eine Frage der sozialen Differenzierung? (Sustainable Food Consumption – A Question of Social Differentiation?),  Soziale Welt, 73(4): 680-712

Brüggemann, M., Kunert, J., & Sprengelmeyer, K. (2022) Framing Food in the News: Still Keeping the Politics out of the Broccoli, Journalism Practice

Perino, G., & Schwirplies, C. (2022). Meaty arguments and fishy effects: Field experimental evidence on the impact of reasons to reduce meat consumption. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 114, 102667. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0095069622000420

Kley, Stefanie, Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw & Alicia Dunker (2022): Media diets of vegetarians. How news consumption, social media use and communicating with one’s social environment are associated with a vegetarian diet, Environmental Communication, Ahead-of-print, 1-16

Pauer, S., Rutjens, B. T., Ruby, M. B., Perino, G., & van Harreveld, F. (2022). Meating Conflict: To-ward a Model of Ambivalence-Motivated Reduction of Meat Consumption. Foods, 11(7), 921

Perino, G. & Schwickert, H. (2022). Pity the Pig Over Cushioning Climate Change - A Referendum Choice Experiment on Meat Taxation

Mittal, Radhika, & Brüggemann, Michael. (2019, December 31). Eating for the future.

Iversen, Nicola, Klopitzke, Carolin, & Marchlowitz, Felicitas. (2019, November 29). Dilemmata nachhaltiger Ernährung.

Brocks, Yannick, & Metzentin, Anna. (2019, November 29). Nachhaltigkeit im Kontext von Mindless Eating.

Engels, Oskar, & Pläschke, Annemarie. (2019, November 22). Kosten nachhaltiger Ernährung.