Robert Orzanna edited Wupptertal Institute.tex  over 9 years ago

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The CSCP is a spin-off of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, one of the leading applied research institutes for sustainability in Germany. Whilst sustainability research is a broad interdisciplinary field, the CSCP specifically focuses on sustainable consumption and production. The CSCP is organised into three groups: (i) sustainable lifestyles, (ii) sustainable infrastructure and services, (iii) sustainable business and entrepreneurship.  \subsection{Group research summary}  For a prospective PhD research I am particularly interested in the sustainable lifestyles group. The group has defined five main research foci. Firstly, it investigates communication strategies to co-create visions of more sustainable living by involving decision-makers, stakeholders and the public in order to rethink how more sustainable ways of living could be enabled. Secondly, the group explores trends and options for sustainable living practice across different household segments, regions and contexts. Thereby it also investigates societal actors and stakeholder groups that influence how people live their lives, and how these actors can be engaged in order to collaboratively work on solutions. Thirdly, through empirical evaluations the group analyses pathways to scale up current promising sustainable lifestyle practices. Fourthly, and closely related to the previous focus, it prototypes sustainable living experiences (living lab), e.g. resulting from co-creation processes, and subsequently test triggers to behaviour change. Lastly, the reasearch research  of the group is used to provide a platform and network of partners and stakeholders for knowledge sharing and collaborative approaches to inspire action. \subsection{Choice of research subject & and  group} %A motivated choice of the research subject and research group / research leader you want to do your  %PhD (max 500 words).  I met several researchers of the group at the 6^{th} $6^th$  Sustainability Summer School in Barcelona in November 2014. Since my deep interest is on understanding daily behaviour of people, we discussed possible projects in which I could contribute to a better understanding of how a sustainable life is to be co-defined to be widely adopted by people in industrialised societies. My contact person is Michael Kuhndt, head of the CCSP. He is currently involved in the launch of a new collaborative research project with a large German food retail chain. This chain has a market share of more than 40\% and can thus reach a large part of the German society. Within this experimental research design I would like to investigate the following question: \begin{enumerate}  \item How can the food retail industry stimulate people to adopt a less environmentally intensive diet and sustain it over the long-term?