Tipping dynamics of consumer lifestyle change: an integrative analysis considering the role of intergenerational inequality

Successfully transforming our societies towards a desirable sustainable future requires finding alternative strategies to currently favored but insufficient and often unjust supply-side and technology-based solutions. I examine this problem focusing on consumer lifestyle changes considering the role of intergenerational inequalities, using a process of integrative conceptual modeling, followed by computational modeling and simulation to analyze how different interventions affect transformation dynamics. Characterizing key mechanisms, involving factors as population-segment specific willingness to change lifestyle, social influence, and capital for lifestyle supporting infrastructure, yields a system of multiple positive feedback loops giving rise to tipping points in lifestyles. Simulation results show that single pronged efforts targeting sustainable lifestyles directly, such as those aiming to galvanize social influence among the younger populations have limited impact as long as ongoing capital deployments-mostly controlled by older populations-do not support these lifestyles. However, granting younger populations greater control over capital deployment decisions powerfully complements such efforts. Taken together, my findings demonstrate that facilitating and accelerating just sustainability transformations requires multi-pronged interventions that combine behavioral and systems levers and that are firmly grounded in an understanding of the complex dynamics resulting from deeply intertwined and multilevel demand-, supply-, and inequality-related realms. Methodologically, this paper offers an approach for analyzing the multiple-equilibria nature of sustainability transformations, and social tipping points specifically. Such approaches are critical for identifying pathways through which more-affected populations can better shape a sustainable future in their terms and for addressing deeply rooted inequalities integral to societal unsustainability.