Why and how lifestyle change to reduced consumption is an active part of the emerging sustainability transformation

Abstract

Humanity exceeds or threatens to exceed the planetary boundaries. The problem of unsustainable lifestyles in affluent contexts is, therefore, increasingly up for debate. Despite growing attention, this theoretical article argues that there is, in science as well as policy, a lack of recognition of the problem of unsustainable volumes of consumption, and institutional failure to address radical lifestyle change. While there is broad consensus about the societal need to address consumption patterns, controversies remain about the need to address the volumes of consumption. The article takes this debate as a point of departure and focuses specifically on a tendency in critical consumption studies within sociology and related disciplines: the neglect of the larger transformative potential embedded in lifestyle change at the grassroot level. It contributes with six arguments for why it is necessary to consider individual lifestyle changes, and particularly consumption reduction, as an active part of the greater transformation needed to make our societies fit within the planetary boundaries. It also contributes by highlighting five critical aspects on how such bottom-up change can contribute to transformative change. It thus contributes to the sociological and interdisciplinary theoretical, empirical, and normative discussion around the interplay between lifestyle change and sustainability transformation.

Introduction

As humanity exceeds or threatens to exceed several planetary boundaries, lifestyle change toward reduced volumes of consumption in rich groups and countries and in most consumer areas, particularly transport, physical goods, energy, and meat consumption, are necessary. Guided by an overall ‘sufficiency’ perspective (Callmer, 2019; Princen, 2005), this theoretical article develops six arguments for why lifestyle change toward reduced volumes of consumption is an active part of the sustainability transformation, and highlights five critical aspects on how such bottom-up change can contribute to the transformation. The article thus contributes to the sociological and interdisciplinary discussion around the critical role of lifestyle change as part of the broader and emergent sustainability transformation.

The need for an absolute reduction of consumption volumes has become increasingly recognized in scientific literature (see, for example, Fuchs et al., 2016; Merz et al., 2022; Wiedmann et al., 2020; Wynes and Nicholas, 2017), particularly considering high-income countries (Akenji et al., 2021). However, and in contrast to the sufficiency perspective, the lion part of both interdisciplinary scientific and policy discourse still relies on the ‘efficiency’ perspective on sustainable consumption and behavioral change, which implies a sole reliance on green technologies, market solutions, and green consumption choices. The efficiency approach means priority is given to greening existing patterns of consumption mainly through technological shifts, such as making cars more fuel-efficient or promoting electric vehicles rather than motor vehicles. In contrast to the sufficiency approach, the efficiency approach is less critical toward lifestyles as such; it relies on positive framings around growth (green growth), market solutions, consumer sovereignty, technological developments, and net-zero policy strategies.

In a broad field of studies, within sociology and related disciplines – in this article referred to as ‘critical consumption studies’ – this efficiency paradigm has been criticized. This critique is partly directed toward the notion of ‘the eco-conscious consumer’, and the tendency to (over-)individualize responsibility. While this critique is valid, this article emphasizes an opposite trap: to ignore the crucial role of people as agents for the larger transformative change. Thus, we address the critical role of bottom-up agency and discuss why lifestyle change will have to be seen as a collective, societal and global responsibility. Our message also targets the broader sufficiency scholarship, which often rightly focuses on the need for macro-level changes. While we strongly support the call for macro-level changes, we want to emphasize the importance of paying attention to the need for a sufficiency transformation at all levels of society, encompassing bottom-up lifestyle changes and structural/systemic intervention as well as their interplay.

In this article, we see consumption reduction as embedded in the larger category of lifestyle change. We understand the concept of lifestyle (change) as a holistic category including ways of living, work, social relations, leisure, activism, and values, which taken together shape consumption volumes and patterns (Akenji et al., 2021). Lifestyles can to some extent be voluntarily formed but are also conditioned and influenced by structural and cultural forces in societies. Bottom-up agency includes both individual and collective efforts. Halkier and Holm (2008) define two necessary components of ‘political agency’: intentionality and autonomy. Intentionality implies a problem orientation; that is, an actor perceives something as problematic and in need of change. Autonomy concerns the possibility for intentionality to be carried out; that is, some capacity to act. Archer (2003) stresses the role of human reflexivity as mediatory mechanisms between structure and agency. Agency is always to some extent ‘bounded’: intentions and (independent) capacities are shaped/facilitated by structural/cultural circumstances, and embedded in social relations and practices. We use the concept of lifestyle politics to delimit the actions that constitute bottom-up agency, referring to politicization of everyday life choices and patterns (see Giddens, 1991 on life politics; de Moor, 2017). Lifestyle politics can be enacted through private, public, and more or less institutionalized arenas (de Moor, 2017). de Moor includes both individual action and collective (e.g. social movements, community groups, transition networks) organizing, as well as direct (change one’s own lifestyle) and indirect (e.g. leading by example, pressuring companies and governments) strategies to capture the various examples of lifestyle politics. These various strategies and levels of organizing are often mixed in concrete activities.

Our theoretical arguments are developed in four steps. First, we refer to the interdisciplinary critique of the dominant efficiency paradigm and from this discussion establish the necessity of lifestyle change toward reduced consumption in wealthy countries and contexts. Second, we turn attention to a sociological discussion around whether individual lifestyle change can be seen as a (part of the) solution to the multiple systemic crises, and present some of the existing critiques to that idea. Third, we target such critique, providing six arguments for why it is necessary to include individual lifestyle changes as an active part of the greater transformation needed to orient our societies toward sufficiency. Fourth, we discuss how such bottom-up changes related to consumption reduction can contribute to the sustainability transformation. This is followed by our conclusion.

Insufficient focus on sufficiency

The efficiency approach is dominating the business and marketing sector, normalizing business-as-usual instead of questioning the unsustainable system which makes affluent lifestyles possible (Kemper et al., 2019). This results in fence-keeping, where alternative business models with potential to bring about changes in the business logic are dismissed to ‘niche markets’ and marketing can brand traditional companies as sustainable if they claim to, for example, be ‘climate neutral’ – a sort of greenwashing (Choudhury et al., 2023).

The idea that we do not have to change our way of life, but only make minor behavioral changes on the individual level, is communicated to the public from all directions. According to Stoddard et al. (2021), one of nine identified barriers to bending the global emission curve is the lack of a cultural alternative. Visions of the future are dominated by a neoliberal frame insisting on economic growth and free markets, which causes a perception that deep transformative change is impossible. Even if attention is brought to different aspects and perspectives of the climate crisis (not least its effects in terms of wildfires, droughts, and floodings), most media channels are stuck in the efficiency perspective. The few reports giving voice to system critique are exceptions, and few challenge the view that the climate crisis is an isolated phenomenon that can be treated as separate from other crises (Painter, 2019). This dominance of the efficiency approach in science, policy, business, public discourse and media results in a failure on part of these institutions to question the existing power structures that are responsible for causing and reproducing unsustainable patterns. The absence of such questioning is apparent even in the IPCC reports (see Akenji et al., 2021), which – despite openings toward sufficiency principles in recent years (IPCC, 2022, 2023), still lean heavily toward an efficiency approach.

A core problem with the efficiency approach is that it neglects the role of direct and indirect rebound effects. The direct rebound effects imply that the savings per item that result from more efficient use of natural resources cause higher demand for that item so that positive gains are neutralized. Indirect rebound effects mean that the savings that result from lower costs of producing/consuming an item are channeled to the consumption of other items (see, for example, Chitnis and Sorrell, 2015). Therefore, pure reliance on technological fixes is not an option. Moreover, the efficiency approach also neglects the problem of continuing growth of consumption volumes in the already developed parts of the world and fails to address the challenges related to the rapid growing urban middle-class, for instance in Asia and Latin America (Hansen, 2023).

Regarding the situation in wealthy countries, communities and social contexts, the sufficiency (or similar) perspective emphasizes the need for truly radical changes of lifestyle patterns, including a drastic cut in consumption volumes, to avoid the harsh future of both climate change and, more generally, ecological overshoot (including pollution, mass extinction of species, etc.) (Merz et al., 2022; Moore, 2015). Some scholars emphasize the need to take into account the imperialist and neocolonialist global structures which overconsumption in the affluent world is dependent on (see, for example, Anantharaman, 2018; Brand and Wissen, 2012; Moore, 2015; Parvatiyar and Sheth, 2023). However, just looking at the issue of climate change, Akenji et al. (2021) calculate that the climate footprints in high-income countries need to be reduced by 91% to 95% by 2050 with the most parts of it already by 2030. This alone would require very significant reduction/avoidance of consumption in the areas of food (meat and dairy products), housing (energy consumption, living standards, floor space per capita), transport (cars, flights) and goods like electronic appliances, clothes, shoes, furniture (see also Dubois et al., 2021; Wynes and Nicholas, 2017). In their article ‘Scientists’ warning on affluence’, Wiedmann et al. (2020: 1) state that ‘consumption of affluent households worldwide is by far the strongest determinant and the strongest accelerator of increases of global environmental and social impacts’. In another scientists’ warning paper, Merz et al. (2022: 3) argue that the ‘ecological overshoot’ itself is a symptom of ‘a deeper, more subversive modern crisis of human behaviour’. Judging by existing policies and political proposals, for example within Europe, however, these calculations and warnings are not taken seriously by politicians. One example is the Fit for 55 package, with proposals to reduce net GHG emissions within the European Union by at least 55% by 2030, that has been criticized for not being ambitious enough, and for overlooking sufficiency and circularity strategies (European Environmental Bureau, 2021).

The sufficiency scholarship, criticizing the dominance of the efficiency perspective, is broad in scope and growing rapidly; its focus spanning from individual consumption choices (e.g. Sandberg, 2021) to suggestions for a radically different organization of society (see, for example, Schneidewind and Zahrnt, 2014 and Bärnthaler, 2024, on ‘sufficiency corridors’). Jungell-Michelsson and Heikkurinen (2022: 8) describe how the concept of sufficiency is used in the literature ‘both as a means and an end in the transition toward more sustainable economies’. An orientation of societies toward sufficiency – sufficiency as an ‘end’ – undoubtedly demands enormous structural changes at the macro-level to ensure a just distribution of resources to deliver wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries (IPCC, 2022, 2023); this transformation, however, needs to pay attention to sufficiency as a ‘means’ at all levels of society, from the individual and up.

Critical consumption studies: critiquing the focus on individual lifestyles

Policies and studies of ethical/sustainable/green consumption, broadly within the efficiency perspective, have often been criticized for the tendency to over-individualize responsibility and assume an overly rationalistic-cognitive assumption of agency. Critical consumption studies provide a valid critique of neoliberal environmentalism and the supposed sovereign ‘eco-consumer’ (Anantharaman, 2018; Gould et al., 2004; Gunderson, 2023; Hirth et al., 2023; Mamut et al., 2025; Maniates, 2001; Shove, 2010; Soneryd and Uggla, 2015; Stoner, 2021; Stuart et al., 2020).

To begin with, commodification and market expansion restrict people’s ability to meet their needs and exercise their freedom in other ways than by purchasing goods and services from the market (Lorek, 2018; Schneidewind and Zahrnt, 2014). The problem is not necessarily consumption as such. While consumption refers to an individual or collective actor acquiring goods and services for immediate, durable, or later use (see, for example, Warde, 2022), the concept of consumerism captures the variety of structural, cultural, and sociopsychological drivers behind our urge to excessively purchase goods and services in modern social life (Bauman, 2007; Boström, 2023). Although it is difficult to define exactly when consumption becomes excessive, a sufficiency principle (Princen, 2005), and related concepts such as ‘fair consumption space’ (Akenji et al., 2021) and ‘consumption corridors’ (Fuchs et al., 2021) that also acknowledge the risk of underconsumption among relatively poor and disadvantaged populations, is important for scientific and public discourse on the matter.

In sociology and related disciplines, critical consumption studies problematize notions such as eco-consumption. For example, when hope is placed on the eco-consumer to solve key socio-ecological problems, this is said to distract attention away from systematic and structural sources of unethical and unsustainable consumption. For Stoner (2021), ‘eco-friendly consumers’ are merely adapting to neoliberal environmentalism. Brand and Wissen (2012) show how ‘the imperial mode of living’ is deeply embedded in everyday life in the affluent part of the world, but don’t seem to put much hope in the possibility of the public breaking free from the structures. For Gunderson (2023), failure among the public to transform climate concerns into action – or in other words, ‘responsibility denial’ – is due to ‘real helplessness’. In contrast to ‘learned helplessness’, real helplessness is a ‘rational adaptation to social conditions rather than (only) a psychological paradox, and where individual helplessness to change aversive events is actual, not an illusion’. (Gunderson, 2023: 272). This rational adaptation reflects a situation of powerlessness that individuals face in relation to the political economy of capitalism.

Likewise, the treadmill of production theory argues that power is much more concentrated in the sphere of production compared with the sphere of consumption. Consumer power is seen as a weak and fragmented form of power (Gould et al., 2004). Although consumers can accept or reject products, they have no influence over the allocation of capital to productive technologies. Gould et al. (2004: 300) argue,

Consumer choice devolves from (a) the constraints of specific prior production decisions, (b) specific prior economic distribution decisions, and (c) a specific distribution of policy and decision-making power. To place consumption decisions first in our analyses would obscure the power relations embedded in the political economy.

Another typical rejection of individual agency in sustainability issues in the view of critical theory is that it is commonly only seen among some segments of the population, like that of well-educated middle-class in affluent contexts demonstrating their ‘eco-habitus’ (Carfagna et al., 2014). Based on such observations, including studies from the city of Bangalore in India, Anantharaman (2018, 2022) argues that sustainable consumption scholarship has tended to neglect environmental practices of the poor and implicitly normalizes racialized, classed, and gendered oppression in examples of sustainability framed consumption (she uses the term ‘performative environmentalism’ to describe this).

Likewise, consumer research using the social practice theory has tended to neglect agency by stressing the extent to which people are embedded in practices and their socio-material arrangements (Shove, 2010; Warde, 2005, 2014). Social practices, instead of actors, structures, or cultural frames, are seen as the primary locus of the social and the central unit of analysis. Thus, we should understand everyday life as highly routinized and focus on spatially and temporally ordered activities such as commuting, driving, cooking, and cleaning. Such practices are enabled and held together through ‘elements’ such as meanings, materialities/technologies, and competences. Existing practices and complex socio-material arrangements tend to lock consumers into consumption patterns that continue to demand high resource use and cause high emissions, such as excess space in housing and redundant washing (Rinkinen et al., 2021). Ordinary and ‘inconspicuous’ consumption (unnoticed use of resources and energy due to washing, heating/cooling, cooking, etc.) are seen as more environmentally significant than cultural and symbolic aspects of consumption (e.g. fashion, brands, luxury items). On the cognitive level, the social practices are maintained mainly through practical consciousness, whereas the role of discursive individual reflection is downplayed: ‘Exercise of individual agency as a source of social change should be considered a rare occurrence, a privilege of the powerful and a distant horizon even in the context of collective mobilisation’. (Warde, 2014: 295). Little hope is put into categories such as decisions, deliberation, attitudes, values and knowledge guiding environmentally conscious action: ‘the solution is not likely to be found by individuals reflecting on their own behavior and resolving to behave better or more ethically in the future’ (Southerton and Warde, 2023: 340; see also Shove, 2010 on the critique of the ABC-model, that is, Action, Behaviour, Choice).

Reviewing the critique: six arguments

Above literature brings important insights into the limits of agency regarding lifestyle change, but the analysis tends to be one-sided. A typical argument is that because (over)consumption is explained by structural factors, such as capitalism as emphasized in critical theory, or by complex socio-material arrangements and associated social practices as in social practice theory, it is ineffective or misleading to focus on individual consumption/lifestyle in relation to transformative change. However, what is often left unsaid or only vaguely discussed is how transformative change, toward more sufficiency-oriented societies and lifestyles, is supposed to happen instead.

Without neglecting structures and extreme power asymmetries, related to global capitalist relations, and other cultural and social-psychological blockers of change (see Boström, 2023), there is accordingly a set of reasons why we must speak of bottom-up agency – lifestyle politics and specifically consumption reduction – as critical for societal transformative change. Indeed, there are interesting contributions and developments within both critical theory and social practice theory (and other fields) that provide nuances and interesting conceptualizations when it comes to agency, which we build on in this and the next section.

First, given vested interests among power holders, it is difficult to see how top-down change in the direction toward reduced levels of consumption, at least in democratic systems, can be initiated without bottom-up public engagement (see also Stoddard et al., 2021). Public engagement is necessary for achieving legitimacy (acceptance) for top-down intervention. Unless a much larger share of the population accepts change connected to sufficient consumption and puts pressure on politicians and other elites to realize it – likely through different social movements and civil society engagement – it will most likely not come about.

Second, for change to be initiated, people must perceive their potential agency. A first step to agency, and change, is the belief that you actually have agency, and capacity for change – individually and/or collectively (see next section), and that your action can have an impact. Any discourse proclaiming that people lack agency, are helpless (Gunderson, 2023), are locked in existing circumstances, or cannot/doesn’t have any responsibility can have self-fulfilling effects; it becomes true by effect (Davidson, 2024). Such discourses may stimulate anti-reflexivity and ignorance (Callmer, 2019). Agency and change won’t happen if people are educated that agency is meaningless and that only structures matters (Archer, 2003). If people (and other actors) fail to perceive adequate means to address high-carbon lifestyles a situation of ‘responsibility ping-pong’ will likely happen:

the scale of action and organisation required to overcome relevant structural barriers can lead to resignation, engagement in ‘excusing discourse’, or a tendency to shift blame onto others . . . Its most likely outcome is a ‘responsibility ping-pong’, where actors, facing structural disincentives, avoid accepting their share of responsibility and shift it to others. (Mamut et al., 2025: 33)

A core challenge is to stimulate inclusive and participatory forms, also taking into account power differences, in which different types of actors can recognize interconnected and shared responsibility.

A third argument for addressing the need for transformative lifestyle change is connected to the fact that the topic is, in essence, holistic, interconnected and multifaceted at all levels of society, including the sphere of everyday life. To only address the problem of fossil fuels – as is common within the efficiency approach – makes it easier to claim that it will be possible to reduce emissions with top-down policies, market innovation and technological fixes. Electrification of the vehicle fleet can then be conveniently framed as an ultimate solution. This tunnel-vision approach not only serves to passivate people, reducing them to consumers that only need to purchase the right items. It also downplays the acuteness of the situation and gives the false and detrimental impression that the climate crisis can be singled out as an isolated problem to ‘fix’, obscuring the intimate connections to other ecological and social crises such as resource depletion, biodiversity, pollution, land use change, soaring inequalities and severe violations of human rights. In contrast, a focus on reducing the volumes of consumption as part of a wider transformative change presents a more holistic and realistic picture of the necessary changes and can encourage people to take part in this transformation not only as consumers but as change agents at all levels of society. Indeed, the social practice theory is attuned to study such interconnectivity (e.g. Nicolini, 2016), and can combined with other theories, such as the transition theory and its multi-level perspective (Geels, 2011; Karimzadeh and Boström, 2022) and on collective action (Welch and Yates, 2017) provide holistic analytical frameworks.

Fourth, a strong normative case for lifestyle change is the cross-disciplinary evidence that, above a certain point of material welfare, people in affluent contexts are not noticeably increasing their quality of life with more consumerism and materialism (see Boström, 2023; Jackson, 2017; Parvatiyar and Sheth, 2023). While income level does matter for subjective wellbeing, the relationship is weak (Killingsworth et al. 2023). One suggested explanation for why money matters, although weakly, is social comparison (Easterlin and O’Connor, 2022:; Easterlin et al., 2010): for an individual the satisfaction is not just related to the use-value of money, but it is preferable to be among the richer part of the population – you do not feel ‘relatively poor’ (Jackson, 2017). Moreover, the common observation that average life satisfaction on national levels appears remarkably stable over the long term can also be explained as ‘hedonic adaptation’ (Easterlin et al., 2010): as soon as people get used to an increased standard, they cease to experience the added value it offers. In contrast, an interesting interdisciplinary scholarship finds various evidences in different geographical contexts for the ‘double’ or ‘wellbeing’ dividend; that is, sufficiency-oriented lifestyles that can benefit both the environment and wellbeing (Guillen-Royo, 2010; Jackson, 2017; Rich et al., 2017; Zhan, 2022). As an example, the eco-psychologist Tim Kasser (2017) has consistently found that people oriented toward intrinsic values such as personal growth, affiliation, and connection with community, rather than extrinsic ones such as financial reward and social status (expressed through consumerism), are generally happier and healthier. By drawing on insights from such research there is no point in defending lifestyles based on consumerism, particularly in wealthy societal and social contexts.

Fifth, individual lifestyle changes have the potential to be contagious (Centola et al., 2018; Otto et al., 2020), in the most positive sense of the word. By showing others that it is possible to be consistent in making sustainable choices with a maintained (and, in many cases, higher) level of wellbeing, individuals can inspire their peers and family members and act as role models, and also lead the way in normalizing alternatives to the mass consumption lifestyle (Culiberg and Elgaaied-Gambier, 2016; Nyborg et al., 2016). We will expand on these points in the next section.

Finally, in any case, we can foresee that people will have to adapt to changing circumstances. Indeed, changes are already happening: ‘impacts of climate change on lifestyles are already being experienced today’ (Akenji et al., 2021: 22). If current lifestyles are unsustainable, by definition they will have to be transformed sooner or later. And if policy fails to adopt measures related to lifestyle (reduced consumption), unsustainable lifestyle patterns will remain, and consequences of climate change, species extinction, and other serious environmental destructions will nonetheless force societies to adapt. Resources will be scarcer, prices will increase, the social consequences of growing inequalities will be even harsher, social conflicts over access to resources will follow. An argument for change now is that people will be more resilient, and ready, prepared for radical change later.

How can people shape the transformation?

Even if the vested interests and powers of production far exceed consumer power (Fuchs et al., 2016; Gould et al., 2004), it is still the case that the social structures and forces of production will not change by themselves but require lifestyle politics (de Moor, 2017) and bottom-up mobilization of counter-power (Stoddard et al., 2021). The importance of dynamic interplay between (the changes occurring at) different societal levels is well recognized in, for example, transition theory and the multilevel perspective, which uses the terminology of niches, regimes (rules of the game) and landscape (e.g. Geels, 2011), in literature on sustainability transformation (see Linnér and Wibeck, 2019), and in some studies of sustainable production and consumption (Geels et al., 2015; Karimzadeh and Boström, 2022). Broadly, following such perspectives, we argue there is a potential of positive and dynamic interaction between bottom-up driven change (social innovation), followed by top-down intervention (rules of the game) that in turn can remove blockers of change, counteract consumerism, and in various ways build new institutions and infrastructures that support sustainable practices. More specifically, we address five critical aspects.

First, recent developments within the social practice theory have toned down the sole focus on practices as such and reaffirmed agency, with important insights. This includes the role of collective action (Welch and Yates, 2017) and cultural/reflective/motivational aspects as supportive of environmentally conscious and ethically guided everyday action (see Evans, 2019; Gram-Hansen, 2021; Sahakian et al., 2025). Sahakian and Wilhite (2014) use the notion of ‘distributed agency’ referring to the interplay between people, objects (e.g. technologies) and social contexts. Although some contributors to a practice have more (and more durable and multi-scalar) power than others to stimulate change, the existence of power asymmetries does not mean that some actors possess and exercise all power whereas others have none. It is important to address how macro-level institutions and infrastructures – democratic procedures, welfare support, public discourse, education systems – can provide leverage and opportunities for bolstered individual/collective agency and further a positive spiral of change processes (Hirth et al., 2023; Karimzadeh and Boström, 2022).

Second, there is a need to recognize a plurality of entry points, and complex/interrelated strategies/pathways of lifestyle changes (de Moor, 2017), and how they relate to larger transitions/transformations. Newell et al. (2021) speak of an ‘ecosystem of transformation’: there are multiple entry points of transformation, where change can be initiated, accelerated and deepened. They distinguish between three types of scaling. First, shallow scaling refers to the dominant rational, cognitive approach to sustainable behavioral change, which includes nudging, choice editing, and individualization of responsibility. Such approaches fail to challenge existing values and structures, and do not problematize consumption volumes. However, they suggest that we should not automatically disregard some examples that may appear as shallow scaling, in so far as they can be seen as paths/steps toward deeper scaling in an iterative process. Second, deep scaling refers to approaches seeking social transformation through more paradigmatic shifts. Third, spiral scaling characterizes ‘the ongoing process of transformation from ‘shallow’ to ‘deep’ scaling as a dynamic sequence of feedback learning loops between individuals, society, institutions and infrastructures, towards strong global sustainability’. (Newell et al. 2021: 7). This last type recognizes the iterative process of reflexive social learning, which connect to our third aspect.

Reflexivity can come as a result when people are forced to handle new constraints, interruptions, ambiguities and tensions in everyday life (Archer, 2003; Gram-Hansen, 2021; Sahakian et al., 2022), such as increasing awareness and uneasiness about the unsustainability of the existing lifestyle. Such reflexivity can be a first step toward personal, social, and transformative learning. Social learning has been covered in studies using the social practice theory. Sahakian and Wilhite (2014) discuss how change can take place through social learning, which involves experimentation and engagement with existing or new social practices. This can involve peer networks where norms and values are explored and debated. Such learning can also facilitate attention to hidden pitfalls, like that of rebound effects, and foster sensitivity to how various practices are interrelated. Therefore, change can happen through opportunities and spaces for learning within a practice. Joint action can foster an awareness of one’s influence within community (Sahakian et al., 2025); thus agency is cumulative, one action leads to another, and learning is critical in this gradual bolstering process. Critical theory contributes, for example, with the concept of transformative learning, capturing situations when individual or collective actors scrutinize basic assumptions and expectations that steer their thinking, feeling, and acting. The theory builds on critical theory’s understanding of how the existing societal order is legitimized and constructed as inevitable through dominant ideologies and beliefs (Brookfield, 2012; Cranton and Taylor, 2012), while also recognizing that people can empower themselves. Mezirow defines transformative learning ‘as the process by which we transform problematic frames of reference’ (Mezirow, 2009: 92). Frames of reference are normally not challenged until an actor encounters a problematic situation that fundamentally clashes with expectations, a ‘disorienting dilemma’ (Mezirow, 2009). The actor may then potentially enter a revision process that evolves through reflective discourse. This perspective has been applied to studies of (radical) lifestyle change, involving for example reduced consumption (Boström, 2020, 2022; Moyer and Sinclair, 2020; Sahakian and Seyfang, 2018), and veganism (McDonald 2000). These studies emphasize the many matters in everyday and social life that need to be reconsidered, unlearned, and relearned, and how participants need to struggle with norm and value conflicts and the structural and cultural forces that narrow one’s perspectives. Studies also point at the possibility of transformative learning at collective levels (Boström et al., 2018), involving communities and place-based sustainability initiatives (Brookfield, 2012; Buechner et al., 2020; Pisters et al., 2019).

Fourth, there is a need to recognize the role of social influencing within and among social networks. People may influence (or discourage) each other through their social networks. For example, in studies of meat reduction, the facilitating role of friends and other contacts have been emphasized (Ginn and Lickel, 2023; Halkier and Lund, 2023). Social influencing happens through various mechanisms: opinion formation; imitation/inspiration from role models (Zorell, 2021); the sharing of information, ideas and messages; conversations (Zorell and Denk, 2021); practices of caring (Callmer and Boström, 2024; Gram-Hansen, 2021); and social coordination (Halkier, 2020). The prospect of scaling up of action through such dynamics of social interaction has been discussed in terms of social tipping points (Centola et al., 2018; Merz et al., 2022; Otto et al., 2020). The concept refers to the ways in which new social norms, attitudes, ideas, and habits can spread and multiply via social relations within and across social networks. However, powerful vested interests seeking to maintain business-as-usual can in various ways try to block such social tipping points (see Fuchs et al., 2016). It is therefore important to recognize the collective counter-power among social movements and civil society initiatives and experimentations within alternative food/energy/mobility communities which can potentially challenge the vested interests as well as the supposed normality around consumerism (Stoddard et al., 2021; Sahakian et al., 2025). Movements are sources of meanings and collective identities (Welch and Yates, 2017). They can envisage alternatives, develop social capital within communities, critique the lifestyles of the (super)rich, foster critical reflexivity and transformative learning, and pressure for top-down intervention; that is, for institutional and infrastructural change. Scholarship around ‘economies of plenitude’ (Schor and Thompson 2014) and ‘sustainable materialism’ (Schlosberg and Craven, 2019) show how groups with radical new ways of organizing community practices can demonstrate alternative forms of living, engage in a more careful approach to material objects and relationships, and provide viable critique of consumerism. Even if a minority of populations (niches) engage in radical lifestyle change, and they may face serious difficulties reaching beyond their own social boundaries, we should not dismiss the possibility that they can initiate larger change processes, involving social tipping points.

Fifth, some examples of lifestyle change follow unintentionally through major societal ‘landscape’ changes, which in turn provide windows of opportunities for top-down intervention. Although intention is generally considered a necessary component of political agency (Halkier and Holm, 2008), it is important to acknowledge how external forces and involuntary constraints can be a source of reflexivity, creativity, and, as a consequence, intended action. Archer (2003) takes this to a larger point stressing that people can reflect on the constraints and opportunities that structure and culture provide. Hence, people subjectively determine their projects and courses of action in relation to objective circumstances in which they are involuntarily situated. The Covid-19 pandemic is a case in point. For example, several studies documented how the pandemic forced people to invent and try new practices related to cooking, gardening, vacationing, playing, commuting, socializing and so on (e.g. Echegaray et al., 2021; Perkins et al., 2021). Suddenly, new ways of organizing everyday life appeared, such as a more digitalized, homebody life facilitating less use of cars and reduced consumption. Experiences of crises, like the Covid-19 pandemic and climate change related shortages, do reveal creativity, adaptive capacity, prioritization of social relationships over consumerism and materialism, appreciation with what one already has, as well as recognition of the importance of good health, savings, temperance, and social justice (Browne et al., 2019; Echegaray et al., 2021; Gibson et al., 2015; Lindsey and Supski, 2017). To be sure, the fact that consumerist volumes and patterns largely bounced back to ‘normal’ after Covid-19 demonstrate the strong structural and cultural forces shaping our mass consumption societies. Still, these experiences are important lessons for coming transformative change, and for demonstrating intervention and action capacity at multiple levels.

In this section, we have identified the potential and possibilities around bottom-up agency. The contrast to the dominant policy pursued is striking. The problem is the lack of recognition of the problem of overconsumption, including the need for radical lifestyle change, and the lack of institutional commitment and action capacity for the task. Particularly so among the political and economic elites, who have a considerable economic interest in preserving status quo. Interestingly, in their study of citizen assemblies on climate change in European countries, Lage et al. (2023) show that the policy recommendations emerging from these assemblies can be interpreted as supporting a sufficiency turn. Accordingly, they argue that ‘the observed lack of sufficiency in climate policy making is not due to a lack of legitimacy, but rather reflects a reluctance to implement sufficiency policies, the constitution of the policy making process and competing interest’ (Lage et al. 2023:1).

Conclusion

The coming sustainability transformation will be difficult and involve multiple competing interests. The efficiency paradigm fails to address the powerful role of vested interests that seek to maintain the unsustainable current order and will forcefully resist sufficiency. The critique toward individualization of responsibility commonly seen in sociology and critical consumption studies too often fails to address why and how individual lifestyle change and bottom-up engagement, particularly in the area of consumption reduction, is indeed critical for the transformative change. Even though there are critical consumption studies that provide a nuanced understanding and promising research findings and concepts, it is important to not get caught in, on the one hand, a trap of overemphasizing the role of the individual and, on the other, an opposite trap of ignoring the crucial role of people as agents in the change process. More promising is the notion of shared responsibility, in which issues around inequalities and power differences – at local, national, and global scales – are acknowledged (Mamut et al., 2025). This understanding sees responsibility in a more holistic sense, as interlinked in web of relations locally and globally; and it recognizes the complex and rigid social structures and hegemonic discourses while avoiding denial of agency. Indeed, social structures and forces of production will not change by themselves. At the end of the day: bottom-up processes of lifestyle change are necessary for the larger transformative change and may also play an active part in them. Without contributing to an over-individualization of responsibility, scholarship within sociology and elsewhere needs to recognize this necessity and potential. This article has therefore offered six arguments why we need to consider lifestyle change, and specifically consumption reduction, for the larger sustainability and sufficiency transformation and addressed five critical aspects to consider regarding how this can happen. What is least needed, in our problematic times, is to deny bottom-up agency. It might be wise to refer to the classic idea around the self-fulfilling prophesy (Merton, 1948). We cannot expect people to engage in the necessary transformation if they are told that their actions don’t matter.