RESOLVE Archive
Research group on Lifestyles Values and Environment
Funded by the ESRC, the overarching aim of this £5m research project was to explore the complex relationship between people’s lifestyles, societal values and the environment. In particular, RESOLVE provided robust social science evidence base for policymakers seeking to understand and to influence the behaviours and practices of ‘energy consumers’ in the light of climate change.
The Climate Change Act committed the UK to an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It’s fanciful to suppose that such ‘deep’ cuts in emissions can be achieved without impacting on people’s lives and lifestyles. Even if this only means that people need to insulate their homes, use more efficient appliances, buy low-energy light bulbs, drive a little less or walk a little more, it implies changes in how people live, eat, shop, work, invest and spend their leisure time.
Understanding the challenge of sustainable living was central to the work of RESOLVE—the ESRC Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment.
Core funding of £2.8 million from the ESRC supported RESOLVE’s work over a five and a half year period between May 2006 and October 2011. Additional funding of £2.4 million was attracted by the group during the course of this time.
The period over which RESOLVE was funded corresponded with a number of critical changes in the external environment. These included the emergence of a policy discourse around sustainable lifestyles, a rise (and subsequent fall) in public responsiveness to climate change, and dramatic changes in social and economic conditions following the financial crisis in 2008/9. RESOLVE both participated in these changes and responded to the challenges they posed.
A mark of our success in engaging with policy was the funding by government of a ‘continuation’ group—the Sustainable Lifestyles Research Group—which picked up many of the themes developed in RESOLVE.
Projects and Publications
Our unique, inter-disciplinary research programme arranged around three interwoven strands of primary research—Lifestyle Mapping, the Social Psychology of Energy-Related Behaviours and the Sociology of Lifestyles—and two cross-cutting themes: Lifestyles Scenarios and Governance and Policy Implications. An overview of the individual research projects (incl results) can be accessed on the About page.
In terms of outputs, RESOLVE has been prolific. Collectively we have published eight books, 118 journal papers, and 118 newspaper or magazine articles with numerous follow on publications since. We gave 149 international keynote lectures including two high profile presentations to the United Nations. We made almost 100 TV/radio or online video appearances, amongst them Prof Tim Jackson’s 2010 TEDTalk which has been viewed an estimated 800,000 times on the TED platform alone, and a BBC World documentary based on the Ethical Man series with an estimated worldwide audience of several million.
