The human side of sustainability

The research from the Centre for Business, Organisations and Society examining how and why we make the choices that matter for our planet.

“One of the interesting things with research on food sustainability is that everybody has to eat. And food can also be, I think, quite an emotive topic,” says Dr Friederike Döbbe.

Friederike is one of several researchers at the Centre for Business, Organisations and Society (CBOS) looking at sustainability on a personal level. How is responsibility for addressing socio-ecological issues allocated? How far does this responsibility relate to individual lifestyle and behaviour choices rather than the responsibility of corporations and politicians – and how do we feel about it?

She continues: “This thinking of individuals as consumers creates a very specific subjectivity – one that individualises responsibility to address sustainability issues through consumer choices. But what about our role as citizens? What about voting and democratic processes?”

Much of Friederike’s research focuses on the intersection between sustainability and food. One of her recent studies focused on the ways in which a marketing campaign from large Swedish poultry producer Kronfågel backfired. The company's 2019 campaign focused on the climate benefits of eating chicken rather than beef, and included messaging such as, ‘If everyone who reads this chooses chicken instead of beef only once, it’s like compensating for 14 long-haul jumbo jet flights’ and ‘Chicken has a tenth of the impact on climate compared to beef’.

Wrong reasons

Passengers queueing to board a plane. — Friederike examined responses to a marketing campaign that likened read meat consumption to flying.

As Friederike points out, “it's not that their calculations are wrong or anything!”, but there was widespread online backlash against the adverts regardless. The negative comments spanned myriad stances, from those entirely averse to the consumption of animal products, through to those angered by the perceived pitting of beef and poultry farmers against one another.

In short, the respondents weren’t opposed to the prospect of taking responsibility for their own choices: what they took issue with was the framing of the messaging, and the idea of a large company deferring the onus of making an ethical decision wholly onto them as individuals.

“We've been studying this as a form of power,” explains Friederike. “There's a lot of discussion about consumer choice – even if there's a company saying like, ‘Oh, choose chicken over beef,’ you still have the choice, right? But there's this idea of governing through the freedom of choice; it's a form of power that's more subtle. Through being given the choice, you're [now the one who has to] deal with that ethical question.”

While for some, these ethical questions might weigh heavily, for others they’re something to celebrate. Research from Dr Diletta Acuti has been looking at how people choose to incorporate sustainability into their weddings. This could come in the form of ethically produced garments, recycled paper invitations, biodegradable confetti alternatives or an avoidance of plastic, to name just a few examples.

“I think it's a way for them to use an occasion where they are in the spotlight to show it off, and to show guests that there is an alternative,” she says.

A day to remember

Diletta carried out interviews with brides and grooms who were either planning or had recently held their wedding. She used these to delve into which elements of the event were most important to them, and how making sustainable choices helped them – or didn’t – in achieving these.

The study found that uniqueness, desirability, emotion and memorability were the most important facets of the event for celebrants. As Diletta points out, people usually spend large sums of money (the average UK wedding in 2024 cost over £20,000) and tend to host only a few such events across a lifetime. For many people, these are among the most special days of their lives – and they understandably want an event that reflects both this fact and their own values and personalities.

So, why might people be turned off by a sustainable wedding? For some, she found, “people think there is a sort of stigma, [that sustainability is] something uncool or for more alternative people.” On the other hand, Diletta identified that for others, sustainability fed directly into these positive attributes. A handmade dress, say, might be viewed as a one-off item and of higher quality, and so more likely to last and be passed down through generations.

As a result, Diletta suggests that brands targeting the wedding industry should emphasise the positive factors around the sustainability of their products, such as how they might be more unique.

“I think the big challenge is making sustainability something cool rather than boring," she explains. “This is difficult, but I think they can do it by communicating the attributes that can enhance the priorities people have for special occasions. [You need to] link sustainability with emotion, and something good for you and the environment.”

For the couples who chose to incorporate these values into their wedding, though, doing so made the event even more special in their eyes: “They say that this playing a key role in the wedding was something that was empowering to them, sharing this idea and showing how important it was to them.”

It’s not just our life events that might be affected by environmental concerns, either: it can be our livelihoods, too. A third of UK employees say they have resigned from a job due to a conflict in values between themselves and their company. Dr Grace Augustine is currently studying the phenomenon of ‘climate quitting’ amongst employees in the fossil fuel industry – whereby employees become concerned enough about their employer’s contribution to the climate crisis that they leave their jobs altogether.

It's a big step. “These are normal people,” asserts Grace. “They have the same financial and material concerns as anybody. Sometimes they have a very specialised degree, like petroleum engineering or geology, that is not easily transferable to another industry.”

Grace has carried out interviews with a spread of climate quitters about their experiences and motivating factors. While you might expect this trend to be most prevalent among younger workers, who are earlier in their careers and so may have less to ‘lose’, she has identified the same concerns and actions among people at all stages of their careers.

But what causes professionals who may have spent years in education geared towards a specific industry to take such a leap?

“People seem to be getting really fed up with the slow pace of change within their organisations,” explains Grace. “They're choosing to leave certain workplaces because they have lost hope that those workplaces will improve around the issue of sustainability.”

Walking away

Arid landscape with power stations in the background. — Grace has been looking at workers who are resigning due to greenwashing and hypocrisy.

These workers, who may not have had especially pronounced climate concerns when they started in the industry, go through a growing cycle of disillusionment. They report feeling their companies are engaging in hypocrisy and greenwashing, paying lip service to environmental values while acting in a manner at odds with their promises. At the same time, they sense that the climate crisis is speeding up.

“It's interesting to understand from a research standpoint – what actually prompts such a massive personal decision,” she says. “I also think understanding the ecosystem surrounding this decision is key, because it's not just about individual feelings and decisions. People find that they need to link up with others. These moves may also speed up climate transition in workplaces, as employers increasingly recognise that a portion of their workforce has these serious concerns.”

The idea of linking up with likeminded others is also central for Dr Annayah Prosser, whose research includes work on activist burnout. Some of her recent research has centred on vegans, and the tensions they encounter around their diet. Plant-based eating is on the rise, but estimates suggest just 3.2% of the European population identifies as vegan.

A large majority of vegans made this choice due to ethical motivations, including both animal welfare and climate concerns, but when interacting with meat-eaters, they tend to minimise this moral stance. Some even pretend to love the smell of meat or to miss it in their diet. When interacting with plant-based peers, Annayah found something very different.

“In one study we got people from dietary identity groups into a room only with other members of the group, because we wanted to know more about how they talk together,” she says.

“What was interesting about the vegan group is that they all constructed activism as necessary or a natural extension of their practice. It wasn't necessarily enough just to eat vegan food: you also had to be an activist.”

The tensions between this ‘necessary’ activism and the urge to avoid friction with others can lead to negative effects on mental health. Annayah explains that vegans may feel the need to constantly defend their dietary choices, something that can also extend to other climate action-related decisions, such as abstaining from flying. How can you avoid burnout in the face of criticism – real or anticipated – from wider society?

A place to belong

Finding community, says Annayah, is vital. The presumption among meat-eaters might be that vegans act as a collective, but Annayah’s research has found that in reality many feel significantly isolated. “The single best thing you can do is connect with other people doing the same things as you,” she asserts. “We know from a lot of research that having shared social identities with other people is really protective when it comes to mental health. You’re less likely to have symptoms of anxiety, depression and burnout if you are regularly connecting with people.”

This connection could take place among online communities, on social media or in WhatsApp group chats, but Annayah has also identified larger-scale gatherings as being useful. In a study carried out at the Vegan Camp Out, an annual festival held in the UK each summer, she found that these dedicated spaces act as a useful recharge for activists.

Such experiences can not only help to prevent burnout in the shorter term, but have an ongoing effect, which Annayah is hoping to study further in the future.

“There is already a big research focus on trying to get people who don't care to care and, to me, that's a bigger step than trying to understand how we can make people who already care more effective," she says.

“But if we can understand why people sacrifice a lot to be sustainable, even though it's practically difficult, then that can give us insights that will hopefully transfer to the rest of the population.”

Despite working on different elements of a vast problem, our researchers all agree that now is a better time than ever before to be studying sustainability – with more focus on the issue and greater awareness of the impact such research can have.

“Thankfully the topic has gone a lot more mainstream within the management world,” concludes Grace. “I think the challenges someone with my interests would have faced 15 or 20 years ago are not as pronounced.

“Issues of sustainability are seen as valid in and of themselves: they don’t need to be justified any longer through the lens of profitability.”