Sustainable Lifestyles 18 results

Health resilience and the global pandemic: the effect of social conditions on the COVID-19 mortality rate | Journal paper

This paper shows that countries with robust health-related policy targets aimed at reducing non-communicable diseases (NCDs) experienced significantly lower mortality rates during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Living well today and tomorrow: young people, good life narratives, and sustainability | Working Paper

In this working paper, Anastasia Loukianov, Kate Burningham and Tim Jackson explore young people’s use of shared social understandings to describe what is important in their present lives, to envision their futures, and to respond to the challenges they identify to the realisation of their good lives.

Whose ‘flow’ is it anyway? The demographic correlates of ‘flow proneness’

This quantitative study of 4000 adults in the UK found that demographic factors only play a minimal role in explaining the likelihood of people being able to experience flow, suggesting that the rewards of flow may be available across society, irrespective of demographics.

The Problematic Role of Materialistic Values in the Pursuit of Sustainable Well-Being | Journal paper

Strong materialistic values help to maintain consumer capitalism, but they can have negative consequences for individual well-being, for social equity and for environmental sustainability. In this paper, we add to the existing literature on the adverse consequences of materialistic values by highlighting their negative association with engagement in attitudes and actions that support the achievement of sustainable well-being.

Is our obsession with GDP killing the climate?—BBC World Service with Tim Jackson, Kate Raworth, Jayati Ghosh and Celestin Monga

BBC World Service's The Climate Question discussing the implications and interdependencies of the GDP growth imperative.

Self-transcendent experiences and sustainable prosperity | Journal Paper

The achievement of sustainable prosperity requires the enhancement of human wellbeing alongside increased care for the environment. In this working paper, Patrick Elf, Amy Isham and Tim Jackson explore the emerging potential of Self-Transcendent Experiences (STEs) to deliver beneficial effects on human wellbeing and sustainable attitudes and behaviours.

The Art Of Power

CUSP Director Tim Jackson reflects on the life of and work of the late Thich Nhat Hanh and its relevance for contemporary debates about the meaning of prosperity and power. (This blog first appeared ...

Finding flow: exploring the potential for sustainable fulfilment | Journal Paper by Amy Isham and Tim Jackson

In this article, Amy Isham and Tim Jackson explore the dynamics of a psychological state known as flow. By synthesising the results of a series of experience sampling, survey, and experimental studies, we identify optimal activities that are shown to have low environmental costs and high levels of human wellbeing.

Materialistic values, flow experiences and the role of self-regulatory resources | Journal Paper

Previous research has shown that the possession of materialistic values can lead individuals to be less likely to experience flow, an important component of well-being. This study tested whether a lack of self-regulatory resources, and a tendency to use self-regulatory resources for avoidance purposes, can mediate this relationship.

Materialism and the Experience of Flow | Journal paper by Amy Isham, Birgitta Gatersleben and Tim Jackson

The need to locate ways of living that can be both beneficial to personal well-being and ecologically sustainable is becoming increasingly important. Flow experiences show promise for the achievement of personal and ecological well-being. However, it is not yet understood how the materialistic values promoted by our consumer cultures may impact our ability to experience flow.

Video | Shifting priorities in post-COVID recovery—Towards an economy of wellbeing for people and planet

Panel discussion with CUSP Director Tim Jackson, Maria Joao Rodrigues (Foundation for European Progressive Studies), Apollonia Miola (OECD) and Meera Ghani (ECOLISE); hosted by Peter Schmidt (EESC).

Energy and Productivity—A Review of the Literature | Paper

The UK is experiencing a period of low productivity growth. Although exacerbated by the financial crisis of 2008, the underlying trend is longer and more persistent. This report aims to expand conventional understandings of productivity by exploring the literatures which relate productivity to the availability, production and use of energy in the economy.

Wellbeing and Productivity: A Review of the Literature | Paper

This report reviews the relationships between the different aspects of wellbeing, productivity, and productivity growth. It is the culmination of a desk-based evidence review, survey, and a mapping workshop held with experts from backgrounds including psychology, sociology, economics, and design. The focus is on wellbeing and labour productivity.

Ethics in context: essential flexibility in an international photo-elicitation project with children and young people | Paper

In this paper, we reflect on our experiences of planning and conducting the International CYCLES project involving photo elicitation with young people in Bangladesh, Brazil, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa and the UK. While some issues such as varying access to technology for taking and sharing photos and diverse cultural sensitivities around the use of photography were anticipated in advance, others were more unexpected.

“I believed I understood the land” | Tim Jackson reading poem by Adam Horovitz

In July 2019, the RSA Food, Farming & Countryside Commission with CUSP director Tim Jackson as Commissioner and Chair of the Research Advisory Group have published their final report, calling for radical 10-year plan to transition to sustainable food system with more government support for healthy produce. The event opened with Tim's reading of a poem by Adam Horovitz, from the collection 'The Soil Never Sleeps'.

Living the Good Life on Instagram —An exploration of lay understandings of what it means to live well | Paper

While the consumerist approach to what living well can mean permeates traditional media, the extent to which it appears in people’s own depictions of the good life is unclear. Using multimodal discourse analysis, this article uses a sample of posts tagged #goodlife and variants collected on Instagram to explore which understandings of the good life can be found on the platform, and what their wider implications in the consumer society are.

Our Future in the Land | Final report of the RSA Food, Farming & Countryside Commission

The RSA Food, Farming & Countryside Commission with CUSP director Tim Jackson as Commissioner and Chair of the Research Advisory Group have published their final report, calling for radical 10-year plan to transition to sustainable food system with more government support for healthy produce.

The Mindful Consumer | Paper

This paper forms part of the exploration of the topic of consumption and wellbeing, in which earlier consultation and deliberation identified a key question of how societies might reduce or replace the role of consumption and consumerism in supporting human identity. Here, Alison Armstrong and Tim Jackson bring their cutting-edge research and deep experience in sustainable consumption to bear on the topic.