Understanding and fostering future consumers’ environmental literacy and sustainable practices

Even though research shows that consumers are aware of their responsibility for green transition and climate change and express their interest in doing so, we cannot observe a substantial change in consumption practices. Therefore, we need to get a better understanding not only of people’s understanding and knowledge of consumption and sustainability but also about the real-world practices. Especially, we lack knowledge on future consumers, that is children and teenagers, who start to make their ‘first contact’ with consumption either as independent shoppers or co-shoppers when following their parents.

The purpose of this Seedfunding project is to apply for a bigger research project in 2025. The project is to explore and foster children’s and teenagers’ environmental literacy (EL) and sustainable practices. By EL we mean the knowledge and competences to act in a sustainable way in everyday practices. This includes building knowledge and competences about sustainable choices and the role of technology for sustainable consumption. We aim to A) Develop empirical knowledge on how sustainability, technology and consumption is embedded in children’s everyday life practices. B) Develop empirical knowledge about children’s knowledge, values and understanding of sustainability, technology and consumption. This knowledge will be used to e.g. inform the design of assistive technologies and teaching materials to support responsible consumption.