Are there domino effects between consumers' ordinary and ‘green’ practices? An analysis of quantitative data from a sensitisation campaign on personal carbon footprint

This paper studies how consumers' reported practices related to food, energy use in housing, daily mobility, and tourism are combined and structured. Social practice theories are the main theoretical framework of this research. Data are drawn from a sensitisation campaign run by the WWF-Belgium and the methods developed to attempt to translate the theoretical focus to practices. Results show that both the low number of ‘green’ practices reported and the multiplicity of combinations of practices indicate a rather important compartmentalisation of ‘green’ practices and seem to refute the hypothesis of vast domino effects in these four different areas. In addition, a wider openness to information on environmentally friendlier practices is associated with a larger number of such practices, which raises questions about the design of such campaigns. Finally, there is no conventionalised way of linking practices and commitments taken by the respondents to reduce their environmental impact. A few policy recommendations are derived for sensitisation campaigns that often assume domino effects between ‘green’ practices, and for tools dealing with personal carbon awareness.