Eco-citizenship: From norm to practice:Social position, material constraints, and diverse relations toward eco-citizenship

Maël Ginsburger; Katharine Throssell

Notes

[1]
See the French campaigns organised by ADEME, entitled “Save Energy – quick it’s getting hot in here!” (Économies d’énergie. Faisons vite ça chauffe), or “Reduce waste – it’s overflowing!” (Réduisons vite nos déchets, ça déborde), or the one coordinated by the association Agir pour l’Environment, entitled “Plastic bottles and wraps – stop excess plastok!”(Bouteilles et films plastiques : “stop le tout plastok !).
[2]
“Sustainability education is covered in all disciplines and integrated into the everyday functioning of schools. Through its ethical and social aspects, it is a part of citizenship education.” Law n°2009-967, of August 3 2009, Article 55.
[3]
In this respect they can be compared with nutrition policies and the fight against obesity, aiming to raise awareness among consumers of the need to reform their lifestyles, while also providing the encouragement and information designed to help them with this transformation (Bunton et al., 1995; Bergeron et al., 2011).
[4]
Although the norm is defined in terms of the public policy discourses and programs aiming to regulate consumption and behaviour, it is worth noting that other actions of communication, discourse, or journalism also help to spread and modify the forms of this norm (Comby, 2015a; Barrey et al., 2016).
[5]
This criticism is particularly expressed by sociologists who study consumption, who criticize these theories for decreasing the amount of attention paid to the role of social systems in structuring non sustainable lifestyles (Shove, 2010). They lead to the “routine nature of activities” being overlooked, as well as the material and normative contexts, and the power relations in which their modification takes place (Kennedy et al., 2015).
[6]
This article benefited from the criticism and suggestions of a large number of people, as well as the anonymous reviewers of the journal. I would like to thank them all. It comes after an article published in the la Revue of the CGDD (Ginsburger and Petev, 2018) which studied the way the connection between attitudes and practices differ according to age, sex and profession. That article does not necessarily question the eco-citizenship norm, and above all aims to reaffirm the need to ensure any analysis of the connections between attitudes and practices linked to the environment are socially embedded, particularly in an institutional publication. Here, the research draws on tools used in the previous publication (particularly the indexes of attitudes and practices) in order to provide an empirical study of how the French population appropriates the norm of eco-citizenship.
[7]
However it is important to note that the inclusion of “concern”, beliefs, values or intentions to act for the environment into environmental “attitudes” varies depending on the studies (Kollmus and Agyeman, 2002; Dunlap and Jones, 2002).
[8]
Although the measurement of practices is based on declarations, which may also reflect attitudes towards the norm, it is also heuristic to distinguish what individuals say they think about the norm, and the way they say they apply it, in order to question the way these two aspects of appropriation are combined.
[9]
A symptom of the recent environmental labelling of certain practices by public actors, the 1998 section of the INSEE “Ongoing study on living conditions” – the predecessor of the EPEM – did not collect information on the number of appliances or the frequency of air travel, even though there were already questions on organic food, recycling, and car use.
[10]
The most well-known campaign was called “Energy saving, quick it’s getting hot!” was conducted between 2004 and 2013 by the Ministry of the Environment and ADEME.
[11]
For more detailed results of the regression models, see table A2 in the appendix.
[12]
Constructed using the standardised arithmetic average of the corresponding standardised index of practices.
[13]
It is expected that these variables affect both attitudes (Franzen et Meyer, 2009) and certain practices (Carfagna et al., 2014; Mathé et al., 2012; Stanes et al., 2015).).
[14]
Even though on average an increase in one point on the index of support for individual action is associated, all other things considered equal, with an increase of 0.15 points in the general index of practices, the coefficients associated with the indexes reflecting a concern about environment as being in a poor condition (0.05) and the negative effects of modernity (0.07) are significantly lower.
[15]
In order to ensure robust confidence intervals in spite of the non-probabilistic nature of the sample, we have also estimated bootstrap confidence intervals based on 5000 simulations. The results are robust using this alternative method of inference.
[16]
We apply the “Kaiser" criteria, and limit the space to the dimensions of which the value is greater than 1. Moreover, our two groups of variables strongly contribute to the two first axes while the third is primarily (67%) structured by attitudes (see Table A3 in the appendix).
[17]
The use of “goodwill” directly refers to “cultural goodwill” (Bourdieu, 1984), i.e. how upper middle class members persistently attempt to conform to high aesthetic standards to obtain status rewards.
[18]
As we can see in Figure 3, the distribution of modalities for the socio-demographic variable is weaker on Axis 1 than Axis 2. This shows the need to include a greater number of variables (relating to cultural practices, for example) in future studies, in order to better understand the social objects behind the cleavage regarding gesture-based environmentalism. Nevertheless, the multifactor ANOVA analysis presented in table A5 (appendix) reveals the strong significance of the connection between position on Axis 1 and gender, education, or age.
[19]
These practices may be associated with others such as walking, or jogging (Bourdieu, [1979] 2016).
[20]
Experienced by women through differential socialisation, and by older women particularly, the need to take care of one’s body goes some way to explaining the particularly high use of healthy foods (Régnier et al., 2009) and thus lower consumption of meat and higher consumption of organic products.
[21]
Here we adapt the hypothesis mentioned by Pierre Bourdieu that in large towns there is a “"cultural atmosphere", in other words […] the incitements provided by a peer group defined its place of residence” ([1979] 1984, 564). In the case of eco-citizenship, these location effects may take place through comparison and discussion between neighbours (Macias and Williams, 2016), but also through the presence of infrastructure and green spaces that contribute to generate a certain attitude towards the environment and the norm of individual responsibility for its protection.
[22]
The typology proposed here is based on the five first dimensions (51.6%) and allows us to extend the analysis to practices – such as the use of air transport – which are not often associated with the two logics analysed above.
[23]
For more details see figure A6 (appendix).
[24]
On the benefit of combining factorial analysis and clustering, see Ludovic Lebart et al. (1995, 185-221).

1 In many communication strategies [1] and even some scientific studies (Dietz et al., 2009; Hertwich and Peters, 2009), environmental damage is above all presented as being caused by individuals and households. At the global level, their lifestyle is presented as being – either directly or indirectly – responsible for nearly 72% of carbon emissions (Hertwich and Peters, 2009). The arrival of environmental issues on the agenda in France since the 1990s, has led to a series of injunctions aimed at individuals and led by public institutions, first and foremost the Ministry for the Environment (renamed the Ministry for Environmental Transition and Solidarity after 2017), or the Agency for Ecological Transition (ADEME). These instructions are spread through communication campaigns, educational programs, [2] or environmental responsibility labels, and aim to have individuals change their lifestyles by implementing a range of actions or investments that are more respectful of the environment. This process of responsibilising the individual is part of the promotion of the figure of the “consumer-citizen” more broadly (Clarke et al. 2007; Johnston, 2008). This refers to the idea of an individual who simultaneously enjoys the choices and freedoms offered by the neo-liberal economic system but who does so in a way that is socially, economically, and environmentally responsible. In particular it has led to the emergence of several terms that have now become a part of everyday language, the most well-known of which in the French case are “eco-citizen” (écocitoyen, included in the Larousse dictionary in 2006) and “eco-responsible” (écoresponsable, entered in the Larousse in 2015). The promotion of green lifestyles and consumerism is a continuation of Becker’s moral entrepreneurs (Becker, 2008), particularly social hygiene movements and policies which contributed to the emergence of the consumer as a figure to be educated, from the late 19^th century (Lhuissier, 2007). But it also takes place in a more specific context in which state intervention is changing, increasingly based on instruments for governing individual behaviour, [3] of which one foundation is outlining – although not imposing – the “normative borders of behaviour that are considered legitimate in the name of public interest” (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2016, 44). Public information programs and discourses around awareness-raising, responsibility, or labelling thus contribute to identifying eco-citizenship as a norm that individuals are encouraged to conform to. [4] The eco-citizenship norm values and encourages certain attitudes and practices that it assumes to be linked by a causal relationship. This is in keeping with the definition of eco-citizenship proposed by Alexander Kiss, a pioneer in international environmental law, as “a generalised awareness encouraging all individuals to take into account, on an everyday level, the consequences their actions are likely to have on the environment, in the present, but also in the medium and long-term” (quoted by Roesch [2003]). At the heart of these information and awareness-raising campaigns is the assumption of the causal relationship between attitudes and practices, which is based on a range of theories, for the most part drawn from social psychology (Owens, 2000; Shove, 2010). Following on from the Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975), these consider practices favourable to the environment as the linear and rational result of pro-environmental attitudes that push individuals to act (Kollmuss and Agyeman, 2002; Harrison and Davies, 1998). Widely criticised [5] and amended, these theories constitute one of the main scientific foundations for policies promoting individual responsibility (Comby, 2015a; Malier, 2019). The eco-citizen would therefore be an individual whose acute awareness of environmental degradation is expressed through a series of concrete actions performed on an everyday basis so that their lifestyle is entirely consistent with that concern. As a theoretical and political construction, this norm is spread through communication campaigns that closely associate raising awareness of environmental degradation and information about “good gestures”, good behaviour, and good household items that can be adopted by everyone to address it. The production and distribution of this norm has been the object of several studies in France (Comby, 2015a; Malier, 2019) and overseas (McCormick, 1989; Maniates, 2001; Shove, 2010), but the social conditions in which the norm is received remain largely unexplored.

2 Using data from the “Household Environmental Practices” study, administered in 2016 by the CGDD/SDES (see Box 1), this article aims to study the variety of forms and degrees to which the eco-citizenship norm is appropriated in the French population. In order to do so, we will look at the spread of attitudes relating to eco-citizenship and practices considered beneficial or detrimental to the protection of the environment, as well as the way in which they are associated with each other. [6]⁶

BOX 1. – The study on “Household Environmental Practices” 2016

The analysis in this article is based on the metropolitan sample of the last round of the EPEM survey (Enquête sur les pratiques environnementales des ménages), made up of 4057 individuals. These questionnaires were administered by IPSOS in March 2016 for the General Commissariat for Sustainable Development, and the statistics service of the Ministry for the Environment, Energy and the Sea. It was administered to a representative sample of French residents over 18, randomly selected within the IPSO panel and using quotas (sex, age, socio-economic category 1 of the reference person in the household, type of residential area, geographical area, and number of people in the household). This study follows on from the EPEM of 2011 (CGDD/SOES) and the questionnaires on “Environmental Practices and Awareness of Environmental Problems” administered in 1998 and 2005 as part of the “Permanent study on living conditions” (Enquête permanente sur les conditions de vie, EPCV) (Insee). The questionnaire is organised in three major groups: 1) based on socio-demographic and housing characteristics, 2) practices, motivations and intentions, and 3) opinions linked to the environment. The second group looks successively at different areas including: “neighbourhood and waste”, “domestic equipment and use of home appliances”, “consumer behaviour and food”, and “transport”.
The eco-citizenship norm is visible in the content and structure of this questionnaire. It can be seen in the formulation of certain questions, such as “To protect the environment, what would you be prepared to do on top of what you already do on an everyday basis?” (pour protéger l’environnement, qu’est-ce que vous seriez prêt à faire de plus par rapport à ce que vous faites déjà au quotidien ?), “On a scale of 0 to 10, how would you evaluate your personal engagement to protect the environment?” (Sur une échelle de 0 à 10, à combien estimez-vous votre niveau d’engagement personnel en faveur de l’environnement?). Questions like this contribute to the spread of this norm by individualising the issue of the environment, particularly given they precede a number of questions on practices that therefore come across as a list of good actions. Moreover, the questionnaire concludes with a group of questions on individuals’ “opinion” on the state of the environment and the actions that should be taken to preserve it. Those who designed the study intended to analyse practices in close connection to attitudes, values, and perceptions about the environment. As a tool of government, statistics shed light on the dominant framing of the problem studied but also contributes to its construction (Bourdieu, 1973; Desrosières, 2005). Using public statistics to study behaviour that impacts on the environment is far from an exception to this (Comby, 2015a).
This study nevertheless has several advantages. Within a single questionnaire it covers issues related to opinions and questions linked to practices, taking into account socio-demographic and residential variables. It allows us to study variables at the individual level and the household level simultaneously, which is a valuable combination when it comes to connecting individuals’ lifestyles to their representations. Above all, it provides the opportunity to analyse a variety of gestures, practices and attitudes considered beneficial or detrimental to the environment, in contemporary French context.

3 Eco-citizenship practices involve a heterogenous range of actions, tools, consumer behaviour, goods, and services, which are assumed to have a positive or negative impact on the environment (by the public institutions that prescribe them). They cover a wide variety of areas of everyday life, particularly purchasing and consumption of food, transport and mobility, electronic equipment, and household appliances, home energy consumption (water, electricity, gas, other fuels) and the production and recycling of waste. The extent of this range of practices varies according to the environmental effects considered and according to the way the environmental question is framed more broadly (Comby, 2015a). As demonstrated by the succession of studies on practices and opinions linked to the environment conducted by INSEE and CGDD/SDES, this ensemble includes an increasingly wide range of behaviour and equipment (see box 1). Here we use nine indicators that measure the intensity with which eco-citizenship practices are declared by respondents in the EPEM 2016 study (see box 2). The emergence of the eco-citizenship norm also supposes a transformation in attitudes, understood as positions expressed in response to a public problem, and the answers proposed to address it (Voas, 2014). The notion of “attitudes” is frequently used in the social science literature on the environment, often qualified by “toward the environment” or “pro-environmental” to specify the way in which individuals perceive the environment and aim to respond (collectively or individually) to environmental problems. [7] These attitudes are measured in relation to the practices that they are supposed to govern. Here we prefer to talk about eco-citizenship attitudes, or “attitudes towards eco-citizenship”, defined as the range of positions that demonstrate an acceptance or refusal of the idea that individuals should change their lifestyles and consumer behaviour to protect the environment. Here they are operationalised using five indexes that allow us to measure the ways individuals perceive: 1) the state of the environment (in a town, country, world); 2) the extent of the negative impact from “modern life”; 3) the usefulness of individual “efforts” even if other households do not do likewise; 4) accepting to pay more for products that have eco-labels (electricity, food); 5) their declared intention to modify their home heating or insulation to improve home energy performance (Box 2). [8]

BOX 2. – Indexes of eco-citizenship attitudes and practices

Many of the questions from the EPEM 2016 study allow numeric or ordinal responses, which enable us to construct indexes synthesising information from responses to one or several questions. Thinking in terms of indexes means we can limit the number of variables being analysed and reduce statistical noise resulting from non-responses or misunderstandings of certain questions. It also allows us to make easy comparisons between an individual’s positions on gradients of practices or attitudes. During analysis, the average of the 14 indexes was fixed at 0, and the standard deviation at 1.
Indexes of practices:
– Recycling index (0 to 1): the average of the frequency of recycling practices, sorting packaging, paper, glass, cans, compost, batteries, and lightbulbs (0 for “never”, 0.5 for “sometimes” and 1 for “regularly”).
–Appliance number index: sum of the number of fridges, freezers, dishwashers, washing machines, dryers, washer-dryers, wine cellars, ovens, microwave ovens, hotplates, televisions, and computers present in the respondent’s household.
–Appliance recency (0 to 4): average of index of recency for four types of appliances. Index is 0 if the household does not own the object, 1 if they bought it more than five years ago (for a television or a washing machine) or 10 years (for a computer and mobile phone), and up to 4 if the household bought the object less than two years ago (for a TV and a washing machine) or one year (for the computer and mobile phone).
– Temperature index: temperature of heating in the living room in winter (in degrees Celsius).
– Energy saving gestures index (from 0 to 3): average of six indexes of actions (ensuring one completely turns off screens and other electrical appliances, washes clothes at low temperatures, reduces heating in the lounge and bedrooms, and turns lights off when leaving rooms).
–Organic products index (0 to 3): average of the indexes on how frequently the household buys three types of organic products: vegetables, meat and fish, eggs and milk.
– Meat consumption index (0 to 9.5): estimated frequency of weekly meat consumption.
– Kilometre index: estimated number of kilometres travelled annually with one’s own personal vehicle.
– Air travel index (from 0 to 27): number of hours spent in air travel the previous year.
Attitudes indexes:
– State of the environment index(0 to 2): average of opinion indexes concerning the state of the environment in the local area, in France, and in the world (0 = “good”, 2 = “ bad”).
– Detrimental modernity index (0 to 3): degree of agreement with the statement “everything we do in modern life is detrimental to the environment.”
–Usefulness of individual action index (0 to 3): degree of disagreement with the statement “there is no point me making an effort for the environment if others do not do the same.”
–Additional expense index (0 to 100): average acceptable percentage increase in cost of electricity for using only renewable energy, and the cost of fruit and vegetables for only buying organic.
–Intention to improve home energy performance index (0 to 2): average of the indexes of intention to modify heating and home insulation to improve energy efficiency (from 0 =“ not for a long time” and 2 = “yes it is already planned”).

4 In order to analyse how eco-citizenship norms are appropriated, I will begin by presenting three groups of mechanisms that reflect how the norm itself is diffused and received (1), the role of material constraints (2), and of socially and geographically situated dispositions (3) in the way it is appropriated. Secondly, I will demonstrate that awareness-raising and responsibility campaigns have not enabled the spread of practices to conform to the spread of attitudes; the practices that are less often addressed in public policy discourses and programs remain less associated with eco-citizenship attitudes. Through the study of the social space of relations towards eco-citizenship, the third section will show that the appropriation of attitudes and practices promoted follows two different logics: operating through “gesture-based environmentalism” or “frugality-based environmentalism” which each combine specific attitudes, practices, and positions in the social and residential space. Finally, using a typology, the article identifies and characterises individuals whose practices and attitudes may demonstrate a form of ecological habitus. Reflecting the duality already demonstrated, these individuals share both environmental gestures and frugality. We will see that there are two groups of individuals with very different characteristics who come close to the eco-citizenship norm, without completely conforming to it.

Diffusion and reception of the norm, material configurations and dispositions

5 In order to account for the modes through which the eco-citizenship norm is received, attitudes and practices need to be considered from a dual perspective. They are both reactions to a norm that is spread through institutional actions, but also the product of material contexts and socially situated dispositions.

6 Firstly, the appropriation of the eco-citizenship norm can be affected by the way it is diffused and received. It has been spread through public instruction programs aiming to associate certain types of behaviour with symbolic sanctions (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2016). Examples of these institutional actions are the creation of organic or eco-responsible labels, as well as public awareness campaigns on environmental issues and information and recommendations on certain practices for environmental reasons. Attitudes and practices are labelled socially desirable or frowned upon, because their either comply with the goal of protecting the environment or they do not. Different attitudes and practices are given unequal roles within these public policy discourses and programs, with buying organic food, “eco-gestures” or recycling being the most important. The importance of avoiding air travel has only been included much more recently for example. [9] Energy-saving practices have been the subject of long campaigns [10] designed to raise awareness about the fact that “actions are above all individual choices” (ADEME, 2008). We might expect the attitudes and practices that are the most salient in the public policy discourses and programs to be adopted first by the individuals seeking to conform to this norm. Moreover, as far as food consumption is concerned, “individuals’ exposure to directives on behaviour depends on their position in the life-course and in the social space, as does their dispositions to apply them” (Barrey et al., 2016, 401). Research has shown that responses to public recommendations in terms of food tend to be distributed according to a gradient from full appropriation by upper and middle social categories, to indifference or criticism among the poorest (Régnier and Masullo, 2009). In the same way, we can expect to observe strong conformity to the eco-citizenship norm among the higher and intermediary social categories, particularly in the most salient aspects of the discourses and frameworks of public action. These social categories may be more reflexive about their everyday practices and thus more inclined to value the institutional sources of recommendations (and the expert sources they are based on), as well as the values of foresight, civic-mindedness, and temperance that underly the public discourses promoting eco-citizenship (Comby and Grossetête, 2012; Barrey et al., 2016).

7 Secondly, the adoption of different types of practices is based on “material configurations” (Schatzki et al., 2001) which are themselves variable, first among them geographical situation (access to collective infrastructure) and housing characteristics (size, shared spaces, having a garden or not). Some authors have emphasised the need to combine a cultural and institutional approach with a materialist approach that highlights the role of technologies, infrastructures, material objects and resources in the realisation of certain practices (Schatzki et al., 2001; Shove et al., 2012). For example, we might expect that households living in smaller homes have fewer appliances, and that certain practices (buying organic food, intensive use of the car, paying for wind or hydraulic electricity) are determined by budgetary constraints or possibilities which the household must adapt to (Kennedy et al., 2019; Coulangeon and Petev, 2012). These material considerations are associated with occupational resources and constraints related to performing certain practices – using certain forms of transport more (i.e. air travel) may be linked to one’s profession and the travel required for it. More generally, age, gender, and position in the life-cycle all influence the temporal pressure individuals feel and the number and variety of practices that they may undertake (Southerton, 2006). Households in which both adults are economically active have more working hours per week, but also more economic resources, which may encourage certain practices related to transportation, food, and appliances and devices with greater environmental impact. We may therefore expect that how well domestic and consumer practices conform to the eco-citizenship norm is dependent on the budgetary, residential, and professional constraints and resources of individuals and their households.

8 Finally, relations to the norm are also dependent on dispositions, ways of acting and thinking that are specific to particular groups because of the heterogeneity of their socialisation context. These dispositions correspond to lasting and transposable schemata that result from individuals’ exposure and experience during their primary socialisation, and which are expressed in the form of specific judgements, representations, tastes, and actions (Bourdieu, 2018). This “acquired disposition model” (Vaisey and Lizardo, 2016) allows us to simultaneously cover the different components of eco-citizenship (representations, intentions, practices) by considering them as the results of simultaneous social experiences, which are staggered over time. Thus having been exposed early in life to awareness-raising campaigns, warnings concerning the continued degradation of global warming scenarios (Stanes et al., 2015), and at the same time the normalisation of central heating and air conditioning (Shove, 2003), the youngest cohorts may be more frequently disposed to express their significant concerns for the environment but be pessimistic about the possibilities of improvement, and declare significant energy consumption at home. This article will also attempt to evaluate the importance of generational experience, as well as gender and social position, to account for their complex and specific positions towards eco-citizenship – in terms of the dispositions they engender. Particularly, there is a number of studies that use the notion of ecological habitus (or eco-habitus) to describe how urban social categories with high cultural capital try to guide their consumption and lifestyles to be more environmentally friendly (see Carfagna et al., 2014; Kennedy and Givens, 2019). According to some studies their dispositions seem to be moving away from valuing cosmopolitanism, idealism, and expertise (Holt, 1998) towards valuing the local, connection with the land, and manual work (Carfagna et al., 2014). The fact that these social categories are reconfiguring their ways of consuming around notions of ethics and sustainability may be a way of reinforcing the cultural and symbolic boundaries that separate them from other social categories (Baumann et al., 2015; Elliott, 2013). This article will explore whether in France, these urban categories with higher cultural capital display a distinct and potentially distinctive conformity to the eco-citizenship norm as the expression of a form of ecological habitus.

The heterogeneity of the eco-citizenship norm and the focus of public institutions

9 Although attitudes are generally seen to be favourable to the eco-citizenship norm (Bozonnet, 2001; Franzen and Meyer, 2009), awareness-raising campaigns do not seem to have elicited a homogenous ensemble of practices in response. In 2016, for example, 81.1% of French people considered that it was true or quite true that “nearly all of what we do in modern life has a detrimental impact on the environment” and 74.5% considered that the environment was in a bad condition at the global level. The majority (68.3%) also seemed convinced of the importance of individual actions even if they were not adopted by the whole population. It is important to note that although these attitudes appear similar in terms of how widespread they are, they do not form a homogenous whole and reflect opinions and intentions that do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. For instance, the perception that the environment is in a bad state may also be associated with the belief that it is impossible to address this through isolated individual actions (see for example, Elyse R. Stanes et al. [2015] on the pessimism of young people in Australia).

10 However, eco-citizenship practices are transmitted unevenly – and also relatively weekly – in French society. Recycling certain forms of waste, or energy-saving practices, are widely reported in the EPEM studies (for example 87% of French respondents say they regularly sort glass waste for recycling), but other practices like car-pooling, or heating with renewable energy remain rare (respectively 30% and 14% of French respondents). In addition, most of the eco-citizenship practices declared by individuals are not binary. Instead, they vary in intensity, particularly when it comes to frequency, heating temperature, and quantity of food bought and consumed (box 2). Therefore, while extreme behaviour remains rare (1.3% of French people say they heat their living room in winter at or below 16°C, and 1.8% at 24°C or more) most French people have intermediary practices. Uneven distribution of practices compared to attitudes is partly due to the uneven attention given to different practices in public policy discourses and programs. This can be seen by observing the connections between practices and the five attitude indexes through four linear regression models. [11] These models use five attitude indexes that have been standardized (Box 2) and two indexes of practices [12] which include all of the nine practices (the general index) and only six of them (in the limited index) respectively. The limited index therefore excludes three practices that are at the heart of public policy discourses and programs: buying organic products, energy-saving practices, and sorting waste for recycling. The first model estimates the associations between the attitudes index and the general index of eco-citizenship practices, all other things being equal. In the second model, the limited index of practices replaces the general index in order to compare the strength of associations when the three routine practices at the heart of communication strategies are not included. In the third and fourth models, these associations are controlled by household income, sex, age, and education level of the respondent. [13] In spite of the strong variation of coefficients depending on the index on attitudes to eco-citizenship that is being considered, [14] we can see an overall decrease as we go from the general index to the limited index. In the models of the general index, the five attitudes considered are positively associated with the index of practices. [15] Inversely, in model four on the limited index, only the indexes on the state of environment and the intention to spend more on eco-labelled products remain positively associated with the limited index of practices. In particular, the association of practices with the index on the usefulness of individual action appears to be due to the inclusion of indexes corresponding to the three practices at the heart of public policy (energy-saving actions, organic food, and recycling). Removing these practices leads to a substantial reduction in the value of the coefficient. Thus, eco-citizenship actions are not systematically dependent on favourable attitudes towards eco-citizenship. Although this observation of a gap between attitudes and practices is nothing new (e.g. Kollmuss and Agyeman, 2002), it is nevertheless clear that it is above all focused on the six practices that are more peripheral to public policy discourses and programs to promote eco-citizenship. Although institutional actions — and in particular those aiming to raise awareness in the general population – often assumes there is a link between attitudes and practices, this observation suggests that this link is in fact produced by them. In order to encourage the spread of individual practices considered beneficial for the protection of the environment, these institutional actions transform the meanings associated with them and identify them as components in eco-citizenship. This is the case, for example, for energy-saving practices for which public communication campaigns have aimed at associating individual benefits (reduced household energy spending) with collective benefits (preservation of natural resources) (Figure 1).

FIGURE 1. – The link between environmental attitudes and two measures of environmental practices

Note: All other things being equal, an increase of one point in the standardised usefulness of individual action index is associated with an increase of 0.15 points in the general index of environmental practices (model with control variables).

Gesture-based environmentalism and frugality-based environmentalism

Dual positionings in relation to the eco-citizenship norm

11 Although it is heterogenous, the eco-citizenship norm is nevertheless coherent, when the logics that structure the way it is appropriated by French people are analysed. Applied to a large number of practices and attitudes, correspondence analysis is able to account for these logics in relation to the social and residential characteristics of the individuals who adopt them or do not.

12 Here, Multiple Factor Analysis (Box 3) is used on the nine indexes of practices, and the five attitude indexes (Box 2) to analyse the space produced by the two first dimensions as a “social space of relations to eco-citizenship.” [16] This space allows for a close analysis of cleavages in attitudes and practices and the way they are associated with each other. Projecting socio-demographic and residential variables into this space allows us to analyse the relevance of the three groups of mechanisms mentioned above – linked to the construction and reception of the norm, to the material configurations and to the dispositions acquired by individuals – to account for the positions observed in relation to eco-citizenship. The first axis reflects an

13 opposition in the individual efforts that respondents make to protect the environment. We have called it the axis of

14 environmental gestures. As we can see in Figure 2, the variables that are best represented on this horizontal axis are the three variables reflecting practices of recycling, energy saving, and buying organic products and the three variables related to the perception of the usefulness of individual action, declared propensity to spend more for “green” products and the intended investment to improve energy performance in their housing. On the left hand side of the space are individuals who say they are less convinced by the usefulness of an action if others are not doing the same thing, and who are less ready to invest (attention, time and/or money) to protect the environment. On the right hand side are individuals who declare attitudes that are close to actions (consenting to “make an effort” even if others do not, and an intention to invest), and who say they do more (in terms of recycling, gestures, expenses) to protect the environment.

FIGURE 2. – Correlation Circle – Axes 1 and 2

Note: Each variable is associated with an arrow. The direction indicates the strength of association between this variable and each of the axes. The length of the arrow (distance from the edge of the circle) reflects how well the variable is represented on the first factorial space. Thus, the correlation coefficient between the recycling index and Axis 1 is 1.51.

15 Individual commitment to the protection of the environment tends to go hand-in-hand with lower meat consumption and lower home heating temperatures. An individual rating highly on this axis demonstrates conformity to actions at the heart of the public policy discourses and programs. Often presented as “small everyday gestures”, actions like sorting the recycling, reducing energy consumption, or buying “green” food products are all simultaneously involved in logics of valorisation and individualisation of the good management or maintenance of one’s body, one’s interior, and one’s budget. The same environmental goodwill [17] and valorization of individual effort is expressed in the three attitude variables strongly associated with this axis. This “gesture-based environmentalism” is limited to certain practices, however. In particular, practices relating to appliances and transport are excluded even though their environmental impact is significant. Aside from the fact that these practices are not emphasised in awareness-raising campaigns, they may be subject to significant material and residential constraints – such as car usage – which can contribute to distancing them from a form of environmentalism that values individual choice.

Box 3. – Multiple Factor Analysis – Methodology

This study uses Multiple Factor Analysis (MFA) to build and analyse the social space of relations to the environment. This allows us to identify n groups of variables (two in this study: attitudes and practices) and to balance the weight of each group in the determination of the principal dimensions of the space. In this case, using principal component analysis would have meant giving too much weight to the practices group of variables, because there are more of them than there are attitude variables. MFA allows us to obtain a representation of each of the J clouds of individuals characterised by a single group of variables, and by overlapping these clouds using Procrustes analysis to obtain a representation of the cloud of individuals characterised by the n group of variables (the average cloud). The average point of each individual is situated at the barycentre of these different points, called “partial individuals”. Overlapping also means focusing on the structures that are shared between the different dimensions defined by n groups and also allows us to analyse each group’s association with the identification of each of the MFA axes (Pagès, 2013).
The MFA is constructed on two groups of variables: the group of practices, made up of the nine variables which are the indexes of practices; and the group of attitudes, made up of the five attitudes indexes. The 14 indexes are numeric, centred, reduced, and have an equivalent role within the group. The MFA is conducted on the 4057 individuals that make up the metropolitan sample of the EPM 2016 study, subject to survey weighting. Here we analyse the two first axes which together account for nearly one quarter of the total variance of the cloud (24.5%).

16 The second axis reflects an opposition between individuals who spend more and who are optimistic, compared to individuals who are more critical and whose lifestyle is characterised by a form of frugality. We have called it frugality-based environmentalism. The practices that are the most associated with this axis are variables related to appliances (how many and how new they are) and the use of personal cars. The attitudes that are the best represented by this axis are the opinion regarding the state of the environment, the degree of criticism of modernity and its environmental effects, as well as the intention to improve the energy performance of one’s house. Thus, in the upper quadrants, individuals spend more (in terms of kilometres covered, and appliances and devices in particular), and say they are more likely to invest in renovation for energy efficiency; they say they are more satisfied about the state of the environment and less pessimistic about the negative impact of modernity.

17 In the lower quadrants, households report that they are more frugal and more critical of the state of the environment. They have fewer appliances, are less mobile, and are more concerned about the impact of modernity and about the state of environment. These two polarized positions in relation to eco-citizenship – concerned frugality and optimistic profligacy – associate the perception of environmental degradation and the number of appliances, kilometres travelled, or amount of meat consumed. The discussion below will show how these positions are consistent with the position of individuals in the social and residential space.

Relations to the eco-citizenship norm and position in the social space

18 These two ways in which the eco-citizenship norm is observed are associated with specific social characteristics of the responding individual and their household. Additional variables such as gender, age, size of household, occupational category (recoded into seven categories including activity status), level of education, and level of household income are projected on the first factorial plane (Figure 3).

FIGURE 3. – Representation of supplementary variables 1 – Axes 1 and 2

Note: average position on Axis 1 of individuals with a bachelor’s degree or higher is 0.15.

19 The environmental gestures axis reflects differences in gender, age, cultural resources, and to a lesser extent, income and occupation. [18] This affinity between environmental gestures and the social categories with higher levels of education is in keeping with the observed overrepresentation of individuals with high levels of education in certain ethical consumption practices, particularly buying organic food (Dubuisson-Quellier, 2018; Kennedy et al., 2019). It also renews the observation that certain middle and upper class groups prioritise the appropriation of behavioural norms that are traditionally valued by institutions (Boltanski, [1969] 1984; Régnier and Masullo, 2009; Barrey et al., 2016). The components at the heart of the public policy discourses and programs promoting eco-citizenship are mainly adopted by upper and middle class social categories (managers and intermediary professions) that have higher levels of cultural capital. They provide the most systematic appropriation and support for the individualised framing of environmental issues and the questions most closely connected with it. It is, however, difficult to distinguish these mechanisms of support of the norm from the dispositions traditionally associated with these populations. In particular, the sections of the population with the highest level of cultural capital appear to share a rejection of purely material aspects of consumption and prioritise symbolic and immaterial aspects (Holt, 1998). Thus, the cost of organic products and the time or comfort lost as a result of certain “green” domestic practices may be considered acceptable, or even valued, in categories with the highest cultural resources because they bestow a moral benefit through a specific and renewed form of asceticism. [19] Inversely, categories with the lowest levels of education, particularly workers (most often men) appear distanced from gesture-based environmentalism. The “environmental etiquette” that is part of conforming to the norm of eco-citizenship appears quite remote from the “principles governing economically restricted lifestyles” (Comby, 2015b, 25). The distance from this form of environmentalism seems to reflect these individuals’ remoteness from norms of “good behaviour” and the institutions responsible for promoting them (school, the media, public administration).

20 At the same time, the appropriation of this gesture-based environmentalism is also more common among women who are slightly older, particularly between 60 and 66 years old (in 2016). These affinities appear to be linked to socialisation contexts as well as to the specific material and temporal constraints and resources of these groups. These results are in keeping with the observation that age leads to greater autonomy in time management (because of decreased professional constraints), and material and time investments in the domestic space that encourage practices like sorting recycling, but also paying attention to everyday gestures, particularly in terms of energy savings (Southerton, 2006; Mathé et al., 2012). In addition to this, women’s socialisation to domestic labour seems to give them a central role in appropriating the practices associated with this form of environmentalism: sorting recycling, healthy and more vegetarian eating, [20] managing energy savings related to certain domestic practices like washing clothes at lower temperatures. Finally, those over 66 years old appear to be slightly more distant from the norm than those between 60 and 66 years old. It is likely that this difference is linked to a generational effect: people born after 1950 were sensitized to environmental issues in their youth, as these have been on the political and media agenda since the 1970s (Comby, 2015a). However, this potential generation effect seems to only have a secondary role in understanding the distance of certain groups from this environmentalism based on gestures. Although they have observed the intensification of the individual framework since the 1990s, younger respondents appear more removed from this form of environmentalism. This observation, which is surprising given the extent of exposure to environmental issues that they have received – is corroborated by other studies (e.g. Stanes et al., 2015; Johnson and Schwadel, 2019). Life-cycle mechanisms appear to be generally adequate to interpret the association between age and environmental gestures. A longitudinal analysis would allow us to confirm the primacy of the role of the life cycle and material configurations on the role of specific generations and socialisation contexts. In analysing respondents’ relationships to gesture-based environmentalism, the three mechanisms mentioned seem to play a fundamental role (relation to the norm, material constraints, and dispositions).

21 As for the vertical axis of critical frugality, it reflects the opposition in terms of income, profession, household structure and age. In the upper quadrants are the individuals who are the most positive about modernity and the state of environment and also the most profligate; they are also households that are the most privileged and the largest (with proportionally greater needs and resources to satisfy those needs). In the lower quadrants are individuals living alone who have low incomes and who are, inversely, more frugal and more pessimistic about the state of the environment and the effects of modernity. Since most of the behaviour that involves expenses is declared by individuals for their households as a whole (petrol consumption or household appliances in particular), it is not surprising that increasing the size and resources of the household is associated with greater transport practices and buying appliances. However, this association between a critical stance, frugal lifestyle, youth, living alone, and low income can be interpreted as being linked to a lesser social integration of these individuals. This hypothesis seems to be confirmed by the position of unemployed people on this axis (in the lower quadrants). As Christian Baudelot and Roger Establet wrote, commenting upon Maurice Halbwachs’ work, “consumption is not simply spending money or acquiring material goods, it is indeed taking part in social life” (1994, 38). Yet the weaker participation of these individuals in social life both in terms of the labour market, family, and consumption may be expressed through a more restricted, disappointed, and pessimistic vision of the environment, and of a modernity that excludes them.

22 Industrial workers are situated in the top left-hand quadrant of the space. Although they often have a distanced relationship with gesture-based environmentalism (on the left), this is often not associated with a frugal lifestyle and a form of exclusion from various spheres of social life. Moreover, consumerism is a way for the most integrated elements of the lower classes (of which blue-collar workers are mostly a part) to set themselves apart from the youngest and most socio-economically insecure groups. As Olivier Schwartz wrote in 1990 “it is an understatement to say that individuals [working class families] participate in consumerism: when they can – in terms of economic resources – they indulge, not without jubilation, in redundant and sophisticated forms of consumerism. We can thus see the wealth of significations and above all the intensity of investments that play out in the “interiors”, and the central status of objects in this space” (([1990] 2012, 101).). This analysis in terms of eco-citizenship shows that consumerism remains a major axis of cleavage within the working classes, enclosed by a cluster of material constraints and social significations that appear far removed from environmental concerns.

Relation to the eco-citizenship norm and position in the residential space

23 he position of individuals in relation to environmentalism based on gestures or on frugality are also broadly linked to the way in which they and their lifestyles are distributed in residential space. We projected nine variables linked to housing and location characteristics onto the first factorial plane. The modalities appear to be roughly aligned in a linear relationship that negatively associates gesture-based and frugality-based environmentalism (going from the lower left hand to the upper right-hand quadrant of the space). The two axes thus appear broadly connected in the position of the residential space and characteristics of housing (Figure 4).

FIGURE 4. – Representation of supplementary variable 2 – Axes 1 and 2

Note: The average position on the first axis of individuals who declare they have no green spaces near their home (aucun espace vert) is -0.3.

24 The pole of individuals who are profligate and less critical about modernity, and who subscribe to gesture-based environmentalism, corresponds to individuals who often live in rural areas, in large houses that they own. Individual heating is frequent, as are the perceived proximity of recycling structures. The surface area of the house and perceived distance from public transport infrastructures are associated with less frugal practices. An abundance of green spaces close to one’s home is associated with a positive and optimistic perspective on the environment. Recycling practices increase when individuals mention the presence of several nearby structures for collecting recycling, home collection, or a garden that can be used to compost organic waste.

25 Opposite this pole are frugal respondents who consider the environment to be in a bad way and who are more remote from the environmentalism of gestures. These individuals live essentially in and around Paris, in small apartments they rent. This also corresponds to the pole of unstable or precarious housing situations, and tenants in social housing are overrepresented in this group. Perceived distance from recycling structures or green spaces is normal, and collective heating is overrepresented. At its most extreme, this pole covers the most disadvantaged urban areas, the zones in which unemployment is the highest, green spaces are absent, and in which insecurity is presented as a major problem in the media.

26 Even though this linear relationship between the lower left and the upper right quadrants seems to summarise the association between the norm of eco-citizenship and material and geographical configurations, this must be nuanced. Firstly, the size of the residential area does not seem to be equally associated with these two axes. On the horizontal axis (the proximity to gesture-based environmentalism), the opposition is essentially between rural and Parisian areas; other towns and middle-sized areas take a central position. Living in very urban areas in and around Paris (where the housing states are often dilapidated and in much worse condition than in the rest of France), rather than in the countryside is – overall – associated with a greater distance from this form of environmentalism. Inversely, on the vertical axis of frugality-based environmentalism, the size of the town increases steadily with the position on the axis. The propensity for frugality seems above all associated with smaller house size and perceived availability of public transport, both linked to the size and density of the town. Thus, the positioning of an individual in relation to the norm of eco-citizenship is strongly associated with material configurations in which their lifestyles are embedded, particularly the structure of housing and residential status, along with the infrastructure and urban design in the area. By conditioning certain types of consumption (appliances for example), by facilitating access to certain infrastructures – waste collection, public transport networks – and participating in the creation of an “atmosphere of eco-citizenship” [21], the place of residence seems to have an important role in facilitating the appropriation of attitudes and practices and defining the relationship individuals have with the norm of eco-citizenship. Inversely, residential choices may be conditioned by the representation that individuals have of nature (choosing to be near to green spaces) and certain practices linked to the environment (choosing a building with a bike garage for example).

27 For French households, relations to the norm of eco-citizenship are structured around two forms of distance that are quite different. On one hand there is a distance from gesture-based environmentalism, which consists in a lower level of support for the rhetoric of everyday effort and fewer eco-gestures declared. On the other, there is a distance from frugality-based environmentalism, which mirrors high levels of consumerism and less critical reflexivity about modernity and its presumed negative effect on the environment. The latter result confirms the observations of Nicolas Siounandan and his co-authors (2013) on the fundamental impact of constraints – particularly budgetary – on practices of frugality. Individual situated in the lower quadrants of the social space may indeed associate practices of reducing consumption with environmental motivation, but this analysis does not allow us to determine how much choice these individuals actually have over their consumer practices. It appears clear however that these practices remain associated with budgetary and residentially constrained zones in the social and geographic space.

Configurations of attitudes and practices and ecological habitus

28 Although these two forms of relations to eco-citizenship are, by construction and on average, independent from each other, are there specific social groups that tend to appropriate eco-citizenship as a whole? In particular, have the practices and attitudes of certain social groups been reorganised and made more environmental, as the concept of ecological habitus would lead us to suppose (Haluza-DeLay, 2008; Carfagna et al., 2014)? Agglomerative hierarchical clustering (HAC) was used based on the coordinates of different individuals on the first five axes [22] to produce a typology of six classes. [23] This typology provides an interesting counterpoint to the duality presented between frugality-based and gesture-based environmentalisms and allows a complementary approach to the space of relations to eco-citizenship. At the intersections of the dimensions that have the most impact on how individuals’ relations to eco-citizenship are structured, the typology allows us to identify typical and concrete “configurations” of attitudes and practices, and to interpret them in light of the social and residential characteristics of the respondents. [24] Each configuration is associated with individuals whose relation to eco-citizenship is similar and distinct from individuals associated with other configurations (see Figure 7 in the appendix for the representation of configurations in the space of relations to eco-citizenship). Thus, we will try to identify those that seem particularly in keeping with the norm of eco-citizenship, and which can be interpreted in terms of ecological habitus.

Six configurations of eco-citizenship attitudes and practices

Category 1: Disinterested urbanites

29 This category includes individuals close to frugality-based environmentalism but more removed from gesture-based environmentalism. They are particularly distant from injunctions to individual responsibility in protecting the environment. They have the lowest level of recycling practices (only 66% say they regularly sort their glass recycling, compared to 86% of the general population) and they show little support for the usefulness of individual action if others are not also making an effort. Their lifestyle is however generally frugal (48% do not have a freezer, 41% do not have a washing machine, compared to 43% and 36% of the general population). Their heating temperature in winter and their meat consumption are both high however. This group is younger and more male than the general population; it is made up of respondents from urban areas with low levels of education, particularly those who are self-employed or unemployed. More than 53% of them live in apartments, and nearly 20% live in social housing (compared to just over 10% on average). This group thus presents the characteristics of vulnerable people that are critical toward and removed from the discourses and individuals who attempt to reform their ways of thinking and living. The partial frugality of this group seems to be the result of limited material configurations that restrict the field of their practical possibilities (limited appliances in apartments, less car usage in urban areas, high heating temperatures that are often collective and out of their control).

TABLE 1. – Six types of relations to the environment

	1	2	3	4	5	6
	Disinterested urbanites	Traditionally frugal individuals	Comfortable consumers	Modest and responsible renters	Well-intentioned home owners	Ethically committed urbanites
N (sample)	787	664	919	878	661	148
Frequency in the population (%)	19.55	16.46	22.36	21.73	16.16	3.74
Recycling index	– 0.94	– 0.06	0.32	0.24	0.39	0.21
Appliance number index	– 0.17	– 0.40	0.84	– 0.50	0.15	– 0.11
Appliance recency index	– 0.01	– 0.49	0.64	– 0.38	0.18	– 0.18
Temperature index	0.48	– 0.30	0.24	– 0.38	– 0.13	0.19
Energy-saving gestures index	– 0.88	0.16	– 0.11	0.48	0.41	– 0.03
Organic food index	– 0.53	– 0.45	– 0.02	0.33	0.52	0.75
Meat consumption index	0.13	– 0.10	0.54	– 0.40	– 0.20	– 0.26
Kilometers index	– 0.11	– 0.18	0.48	– 0.37	0.17	-0.21
Air travel index	0.00	0.03	– 0.05	– 0.14	0.10	0.50

State of the environment index	0.23	– 0.81	– 0.18	0.66	– 0.15	0.27
Detrimental modernity index	0.27	– 0.98	– 0.14	0.49	0.23	– 0.11
Usefulness of individual action index	– 0.90	– 0.10	0.41	0.58	– 0.27	0.46
Additional spending index	– 0.31	– 0.25	– 0.17	– 0.05	0.07	3.72
Intention to improve home energy performance (EP) index	– 0.41	– 0.35	– 0.24	– 0.33	1.59	0.15
Overrepresented characteristics	Social housing	Single person	House with garden	House size	Homeowner	Bachelor’s deg. Or more
	(19.3 %)	(48.3 %)	(77.5 %)	< 64 m² (34.7 %)	(79.5 %)	(41.8 %)
	Paris urban area	House size	Income > 3 000 euro	Woman	House size	Paris urban area
	(21.8 %)	< 64 m² (30.2 %)	(48.9 %)	(58.8 %)	> 90 m² (69.8 %)	(22.1 %)
	< 43 years old (45.8 %)	Income < euro2,000	>4 people in household	Single person	Man (54.4 %)	Income
	Vocational ed. (27 %)	(47,8 %)	(29.3 %)	(46.6 %)		>euro3,000 (49%)
		> 66 years (22.4 %)

TABLE 1. – Six types of relations to the environment

Note : for each index, the average of the population is zero and the standard deviation is one. The average of the recycling index in group 1 is -0.94

Category 2: Traditionally frugal individuals

30 The second category, much like the first, seems to reflect a group of outcasts. These are remote from gesture-based environmentalism and have an intermediary position on the axis of critical frugality, because these individuals are generally frugal in their lifestyle but also not highly critical of environmental issues. These are people who often live alone (48% of them, even though only 34% of our sample live alone). They also live in smaller housing (82m² on average compared to 97m² for the rest of the population) and have lower levels of income. This category includes populations who are older than average (28% of over 75-year-olds are in this group) whose lifestyle is characterised by frugality and a concern for money-saving. They have few appliances and devices that are relatively old, and their heating temperatures and meat-eating habits are also relatively low. This tendency to sobriety goes hand-in-hand with low consumption of organic products (which are more expensive), and a low propensity to spend more to protect the environment, and no intention to undertake renovations for energy efficiency. This category is thus characterised by attitudes that are remote from eco-citizenship, including low levels of criticism about the effects of modernity, low levels of concern about the state of the environment, or low support for the usefulness of isolated individual actions. This thrifty lifestyle may be explained by effects of scale (to do with the size of the household and the home), low income, less-expensive consumer practices (Mathé et al., 2012), and a remoteness from injunctions to eco-citizenship for generations born after the Second World War. Behind the characteristics of a frugal lifestyle, but one which is distant from injunctions to eco-citizenship, can be seen a second form of social exclusion; different from the “struggling” young urbanites. This concerns respondents who are older, poorer, and live alone.

Category 3: Comfortable consumers

31 The individuals in this group are far removed from frugality-based environmentalism and are in an intermediary position in relation to environmentalism based on gestures. They are more often homeowners than the other groups, particularly of large houses with gardens (more than one individual in three lives in a house over 120 m², compared to less than a quarter of the overall population). These houses are often in rural areas and respondents rarely live alone. The available income in their households is relatively high (over euro3,000 per month for close to half of them). These individuals have lifestyles that are characterised by high levels of consumerism; they regularly buy new appliances and devices, eat more meat than the average, and the temperature of their living space and use of the car are also higher than average. Although they say they have a positive attitude towards individual efforts and a tendency to recycle, the rest of their practices are not in keeping with eco-citizenship. For example, they do not envisage renovating their homes to improve insulation or heating and are not particularly concerned about the state of the environment. Their lifestyle seems to demonstrate a form of materialism that is very removed from sobriety and generally unconcerned about the environment.

Category 4: Modest and responsible renters

32 The fourth group corresponds to a form of appropriation of the eco-citizenship norm that is mainly demonstrated by women. Its members strongly conform to frugality-based environmentalism and are close to gesture-based environmentalism. Nearly 38% of its members are women who live alone, and who often have low incomes (less than euro2,000 per month for 47% of them). These individuals are more urban than the average and live in smaller houses (more than 33% of them live in houses less than 64m² squared, compared to 23% of the general population). Less than 48% of them own their homes and they pay close attention to the domestic space. A combination of limited financial resources and feminine socialisation seem to encourage energy-saving practices and limit the consumption of meat. This relative sobriety can be seen in more infrequent use of the car and air travel as well as fewer appliances and lower temperatures in the house. Above all, these individuals feel strongly committed to promoting the environment which is perceived as being in danger. They express their concern about the negative impact of modernity on an environment that is already seen as in poor condition, and they consider individual efforts as effective whether others do the same thing or not. In addition to a strong tendency to recycle, these attitudes are also associated with higher consumption of organic food on average, linked to women’s food preferences which can be more easily expressed when they live alone. However, these attitudes are mitigated by low levels of intention to modify the energy performance of the house for these individuals who often rent and have low incomes.

Category 5: Well-intentioned homeowners

33 This group presents characteristics that are close to Comfortable Consumers; individuals with higher incomes living in rural areas in houses with gardens that they often own. However, this group is more masculine (54.4% compared to 46.8%) and slightly less lower class (29% of workers, employees and unemployed, compared to 33% for category 3) than category 3. This group is made up of active consumers and who are well equipped with appliances and devices that are generally recent. They also have high levels of car use. This category is therefore distanced from frugality-based environmentalism. And yet members in this category invest their consumer practices with an environmental aspect that places them quite close to environmentalism based on gestures. Specifically, 27% of them state that environmental labels influence their textile buying (compared to 16% on average). More than 20% buy vegetable boxes from AMAP-type structures (organic farm-sourced vegetable box direct from the producer) at least once every fortnight (compared to barely 10% on average). This tendency toward “green” consumerism and investment can also be seen in their stated intention to renovate the home to improve energy efficiency. Members of this category are more often men (gendered socialisation typically assigns men home improvement jobs), homeowners, rarely live alone, and more than 90% of them say they would like to change the energy installation in their house. This intention to invest is also associated with attention to practices such as recycling and a concern for the negative impacts that modernity has on an environment that is nevertheless perceived as being in good condition.

Category 6: Ethically committed urbanites

34 The final group represents a very small number of people (less than 150 respondents). It is closely aligned with gesture-based environmentalism, and has an intermediary position on the axis of frugality-based environmentalism. It is above all made up of highly educated individuals (42% of them have completed more than three years tertiary study, compared to 26% on average) who are also well-off, and live in apartments in and around Paris (most likely within Paris itself). Their lifestyle is characterised by low levels of car use. Not having limited financial resources means they can indulge in more expensive and distinctive forms of consumption, particularly in terms of leisure, travel, and the environment. Their level of consumption of organic products is very high and their willingness to pay more to protect the environment is even higher. Although they consider that individual efforts are efficient and that the state of the environment is generally poor, their use of air travel is intensive (one member of this category out of three spent more than five hours in an aeroplane over the past year, compared to just one in six in the overall population). This is a reminder of the peripheral role of air transport travel in the public policy discourses and programs promoting eco-citizenship behaviour. Their concern for social distinction can also be seen in the types of products and forms of consumer practices they value (for their moral and cultural weight), much more than through any materialistic support for consumer society, as can be seen in their lower tendency to replace appliances and devices.

Two forms of ecological habitus?

35 The typical positions in relation to the eco-citizenship norm reveal its heterogeneity; it is never uniformly accepted or rejected. Disinterested urbanites (category 1) and comfortable consumers (category 3) seem to be particularly removed from both forms of environmentalism. And yet, although they do not support the individual solutions promoted to resolve environmental problems, disinterested urbanites do not underestimate their importance. They do not use their car very much, unlike the well-intentioned homeowners (category 5) who declare very profligate lifestyles. The association with income is variable depending on the types of relationship to the environment that are considered. Higher income, when it is associated with other characteristics of individuals in categories 5 and 6, may be associated with a propensity to consume more “green” products and invest in more energy efficient devices. However, the lower incomes of individuals in categories 2 and 4 are associated with more restrained, frugal behaviour. Eco-citizenship attitudes may accompany (category 4) budgetary constraints or not (category 2).

36 Two categories set themselves apart through their very strong appropriation of the eco-citizenship norm: modest responsible renters (4) and ethically committed urbanites (6). Highly educated urban dwellers, the individuals in group 6, seem to have experienced a reconfiguration of their tastes, dispositions, and representations to reflect their awareness of environmental issues. This analysis is in keeping with results that show the emergence of a form of ecological habitus within a specific population of urban residents with high cultural capital in North America (Carfagna et al., 2014; Kennedy et al., 2019). According to these sociologists, the tastes of these categories are no longer oriented toward cosmopolitanism, idealism (or refusal of materialism) and expertise, as Douglas B. Holt showed in 1998, but are more and more focused on local, material, and manual labour (Carfagna et al., 2014). The attitudes of ethically committed urbanites appear strongly oriented to the protection of the environment and, aside from their declared tendency to buy organic, their preference on buying local can be seen in their tendency to systematically say they are careful about where products come from (for more than 60% of them, compared to 45% on average). However, among these respondents the reconfiguration of practices and representations to be “greener” seems both dual and unfinished. Firstly, the tendency toward localism in this group is also associated with significant cosmopolitanism that can be seen in the frequency of air travel. This is likely to do with professional travel, which above all concerns the most qualified employees, along with significant holiday travel which is a way of sustaining cultural capital (Demoli and Subtil, 2019). Finally, although this group represents the most legitimate practices, household production of goods for own use is far from frequent in this category. Practices like producing subsistence food or collecting rainwater are not more frequent than average (around 7% and 45%). The increasing association between localism, materialism, valuing manual labour, and high levels of cultural capital is thus incomplete in this category. However, this group nevertheless demonstrates a strong appropriation of the eco-citizenship norm.

37 Moreover, the propensity of respondents to declare practices and attitudes that are generally in keeping with the norm of eco-citizenship also appears significant within a very different population, category 4, in which single women, who are less urban and have lower economic and cultural resources are overrepresented. Their practices are generally frugal, and they have a significant level of concern for the environment. All of these elements lead to a strong appropriation of gesture-based environmentalism and make this group particularly close to the norm of eco-citizenship.

38 Although there are differences – particularly in practices and attitudes that remain removed from the norm of eco-citizenship (high levels of air travel vs low intention to renovate for energy efficiency) – categories 4 and 6 both demonstrate a strong appropriation of the norm of eco-citizenship, even though their primary sociodemographic and residential characteristics are very different. Far from challenging the hypothesis of an emerging ecological habitus that – although young and incomplete – seems to characterise a minority of urban categories with high cultural capital, these results suggest the need to consider that this habitus may be manifold, associated with very different social groups and residential contexts. Specifically, a group made up of mostly women with low cultural resources from small households say they adopt practices that, overall, resemble an appropriation of the norm of eco-citizenship that is just as strong as that of ethically committed urbanites.

40 Campaigns to raise awareness and responsibility have encouraged practices that are supposed to help protect the environment and attitudes that support such practices. They have therefore led to the emergence of a norm of eco-citizenship. Based on the individualisation of governance of behaviour as well as on a theoretical foundation that considers beliefs and values to be the primary vector of action, these discourses and programs suppose that environmentalism is a matter for everyone and that otherwise routine actions must become political. This article set out to analyse the way in which French people position themselves vis-a-vis the norm of eco-citizenship through their attitudes and practices. It has thus sought to answer three questions: is the norm of eco-citizenship presented as a unified norm, with practices that are uniformly associated with attitudes? What are the main social and residential logics at work in the way individuals position themselves in relation to this norm? And finally, can we identify the existence of an ecological habitus in the French case?

41 In response to these questions, we have seen that the eco-citizenship norm does not seem very unified; it is marked in particular by a disconnection between less institutionalised practices (which are often the most polluting) and the attitudes assumed to encourage them. The association of practices with attitudes appears – at least partly – to be the product of specific programs (awareness-raising campaigns and information, eco-labels), focused on specific practices that are received in different ways depending on the location in the social space.

42 Through the notions of gesture-based and frugality-based environmentalism, this article has demonstrated a correspondence between the degree of conformity to the norm of eco-citizenship, social situation, and residential situation. Those two forms of positioning toward the norms are analytically different. The first mirrors a support for domestic practices that have been the subject of recommendations from public authorities, and support for the rhetoric of individual efforts – typical of a rural, educated, older, feminine pole in the social space, disposed to conformity and investing in the domestic sphere. It interacts with a form of frugality, which is critical of the way society operates and its environmental impacts – which is typical of an urban, younger, socio-economically vulnerable pole in the social space, and individuals with significant financial and residential restrictions. At the intersection of these two relations to the norm of eco-citizenship, the exploration of combinations of attitudes and practices confirms the existence of an ecological habitus in the French case among highly educated urbanites. But it also suggests that it exists – although differently – among a population that it is more feminine, single, and less well-off, and who express it through a frugal lifestyle and attitudes that are favourable to eco-citizenship.

43 It is at the intersection between relatively recent institutional programs seeking to label certain actions as “pro-environmental”, material configurations, and pre-existing dispositions that attitudes and practices of eco-citizenship must be analysed. These analyses suggest that these three dimensions shape the gesture-based and frugality-based environmentalism to various degrees; the first seems to be associated with environmental issues, while the second remains much more associated with material constraints. Additional data able to distinguish between the meanings that individuals associate with practices, and the evolution of their distribution in the population would allow us to better understand the way in which the significations of these practices have evolved since policies to raise awareness and responsibility first emerged in the 1990s.

Appendix

TABLE 1. – Linear regressions for the general index of environnental practices

Dependent variable	General index	Restricted index	General index	Restricted index
State of the environment	0.06** (0.02; 0.09)	0.10*** (0.06; 0.13)	0.05** (0.02; 0.08)	0.09*** (0.05; 0.12)
Detrimental modernity	0.07*** (0.04; 0.11)	0.0 (- 0.01; 0.06)	0.07*** (0.04; 0.10)	0.01 (- 0.02; 0.05)
Usefulness of individual action	0.15*** (0.12; 0.19)	0.02 (- 0.02; 0.05)	0.15*** (0.12; 0.19)	0.02 (- 0.01; 0.05)
Additional expense	0.09*** (0.06; 0.13)	0.02 (- 0.02; 0.06)	0.11*** (0.08; 0.15)	0.05** (0.01; 0.08)
Intention to improve home energy performance	0.07*** (0.03; 0.10)	- 0.05** (- 0.09; - 0.02)	0.09*** (0.06; 0.12)	- 0.02 (- 0.05; 0.01)
sex (ref. = Woman)
Man			- 0.11***	- 0.01
			(- 0.17; - 0.05)	(- 0.07; 0.05)
Age (ref. = 44-59 years)
< 32 years			- 0.19***	- 0.09
			(- 0.29; - 0.09)	(- 0.19; 0.01)
32-43 years			- 0.20***	- 0.12**
			(- 0.29; - 0.11)	(- 0.21; - 0.04)
60-66 years			0.19*** (0.10; 0.27)	0.04 (- 0.04; 0.13)
> 66 years			0.22*** (0.12; 0.31)	0.13** (0.036; 0.22)
Education (ref. = high school certificate)
Lower secondary or less			- 0.03 (- 0.15; 0.09)	- 0.01 (- 0.11; 0.13)
Vocational training			- 0.08 (- 0.17; 0.01)	- 0.09* (- 0.18; - 0.01)
Two years postsecondary			0.06 (- 0.03; 0.15)	- 0.01 (- 0.10; 0.08)
Three years postsecondary and +			0.17*** (0.08; 0.26)	0.14** (0.05; 0.22)
Income (ref. = 1 200-2 000 euro/month)
< 1 200 euro/month			0.20*** (0.09; 0.31)	0.32*** (0.21; 0.43)
2 000-3 000 euro/ month			- 0.37***	- 0.50***
			(- 0.46; - 0.29)	(- 0.58; - 0.41)
3 000-4 500 euro/ month			- 0.57***	- 0.81***
			(- 0.67; - 0.48)	(- 0.90; - 0.71)
> 4 500 euro/ month			- 0.88***	- 1.14***
			(- 1.02; - 0.75)	(- 1.27; - 1.01)
Constant	0.00 (-0.03; 0.03)	0.00 (-0.04; 0.03)	0.31*** (0.26; 0.42)	0.40*** (0.30; 0.50)
Observations	3,640	3,640	3,640	3,640
*Adjusted R²*	0.05	0.01	0.16	0.21

TABLE 1. – Linear regressions for the general index of environnental practices

Note: * p < 0.05; ** p < 0.01; *** p < 0.001. Confidence intervals between parenthesis are computed at 95%.
If the value of the other attitude indexes is held constant, an increase in one point on the standardised index on the state of the environment is associated on average with an increase in 0.06 points on the index of general environmental practices (model 1).

TABLE A2. – Inertia explained by the MFA factors

Factor	Value	Inertia (%)	Cumulated inertia (%)	Contribution Of practices variables (%)	Contribution Of attitudes variables (%)
1	1.27	13.41	13.41	49.17	50.83
2	1.07	11.27	24.68	57.94	42.06
3	0.91	9.62	34.29	33.37	66.63
4	0.82	8.69	42.98	33.48	66.52
5	0.81	8.61	51.60	20.62	79.38
6	0.67	7.09	58.69	8.66	91.34
7	0.60	6.33	65.02	50.61	49.39
8	0.59	6.23	71.25	80.08	19.92
9	0.56	5.95	77.20	95.04	4.96
10	0.53	5.65	82.85	98.08	1.92
11	0.50	5.28	88.13	80.76	19.24
12	0.41	4.34	92.47	94.62	5.38
13	0.38	3.98	96.45	98.92	1.08
14	0.34	3.55	100.00	98.66	1.34

TABLE A2. – Inertia explained by the MFA factors

Note: The first factor of the MFA accounts for 13.41% of the total inertia of the cloud of points.

TABLE A3. – Multivariate ANOVA on coordinates of individuals on Axis 1

	Degrees of freedom	Sum of squares	Mean squares	F	*p-value*

Education	4	68.49	17.12	13.97	< 0.001
Age range	4	31.04	7.76	6.33	< 0.001
Number of people in household	3	7.60	2.53	2.07	0.102
Occupational category	6	6.19	1.03	0.84	0.537
Income	4	8.25	2.06	1.68	0.151
Sex	1	19.16	19.16	15.63	< 0.001
Residual	3,618	4,433.62	1.23	–	–
Observations			3,640

TABLE A3. – Multivariate ANOVA on coordinates of individuals on Axis 1

Note: A low p-value reflects a significant association, between the variable and the first axis of the MFA.

TABLE A4. – Multivariate ANOVA on the coordinates of individuals on Axis 2

	Degrees of freedom	Sum of squares	Mean squares	F	*p-value*
Education	4	4.58	1.14	1.31	0.266
Age range	4	30.02	7.50	8.56	< 0.001
Number of people in household	3	461.80	153.93	175.54	< 0.001
	6	55.81	9.30	10.61	< 0.001
Occupational category
	4	118.20	29.55	33.58	< 0.001
Income
	1	7.67	7.67	8.75	0.003
Sex
Residual	3,618	3,172.62	0.88	–	–
Observations			,40

TABLE A4. – Multivariate ANOVA on the coordinates of individuals on Axis 2

Note: A low p-value reflects a significant association between the variable and the second axis of the MFA.

FIGURE A5. – Projection of the 4 057 individuals – Axes 1 and 2

Note: The coordinates of each point correspond to the position of one individual respondent on the first factorial plane.

FIGURE A6. – HAC – Increase in inertia following the addition of an additional category

Note: Moving from a division into 4 categories to a division into 5 categories leads to an increase in intertia of 0.3.

FIGURE A7. – Representation of clusters from the HAC on the first factorial plane of the MFA

Note: The points represent the barycentres of each group, the ellipses reflect the concentration of 75% of the individuals in each cluster. The individuals associated with category 6 have an average coordinate of 1.85 on Axis 1.

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Mots-clés éditeurs : ENVIRONMENT, SOCIAL NORMS, SOCIAL DISPOSITION, MULTIPLE FACTOR ANALYSIS, ECO-CITIZENSHIP, LIFESTYLES, CONSUMPTION

Mise en ligne 06/26/2020

Notes

[1]
See the French campaigns organised by ADEME, entitled “Save Energy – quick it’s getting hot in here!” (Économies d’énergie. Faisons vite ça chauffe), or “Reduce waste – it’s overflowing!” (Réduisons vite nos déchets, ça déborde), or the one coordinated by the association Agir pour l’Environment, entitled “Plastic bottles and wraps – stop excess plastok!”(Bouteilles et films plastiques : “stop le tout plastok !).
[2]
“Sustainability education is covered in all disciplines and integrated into the everyday functioning of schools. Through its ethical and social aspects, it is a part of citizenship education.” Law n°2009-967, of August 3 2009, Article 55.
[3]
In this respect they can be compared with nutrition policies and the fight against obesity, aiming to raise awareness among consumers of the need to reform their lifestyles, while also providing the encouragement and information designed to help them with this transformation (Bunton et al., 1995; Bergeron et al., 2011).
[4]
Although the norm is defined in terms of the public policy discourses and programs aiming to regulate consumption and behaviour, it is worth noting that other actions of communication, discourse, or journalism also help to spread and modify the forms of this norm (Comby, 2015a; Barrey et al., 2016).
[5]
This criticism is particularly expressed by sociologists who study consumption, who criticize these theories for decreasing the amount of attention paid to the role of social systems in structuring non sustainable lifestyles (Shove, 2010). They lead to the “routine nature of activities” being overlooked, as well as the material and normative contexts, and the power relations in which their modification takes place (Kennedy et al., 2015).
[6]
This article benefited from the criticism and suggestions of a large number of people, as well as the anonymous reviewers of the journal. I would like to thank them all. It comes after an article published in the la Revue of the CGDD (Ginsburger and Petev, 2018) which studied the way the connection between attitudes and practices differ according to age, sex and profession. That article does not necessarily question the eco-citizenship norm, and above all aims to reaffirm the need to ensure any analysis of the connections between attitudes and practices linked to the environment are socially embedded, particularly in an institutional publication. Here, the research draws on tools used in the previous publication (particularly the indexes of attitudes and practices) in order to provide an empirical study of how the French population appropriates the norm of eco-citizenship.
[7]
However it is important to note that the inclusion of “concern”, beliefs, values or intentions to act for the environment into environmental “attitudes” varies depending on the studies (Kollmus and Agyeman, 2002; Dunlap and Jones, 2002).
[8]
Although the measurement of practices is based on declarations, which may also reflect attitudes towards the norm, it is also heuristic to distinguish what individuals say they think about the norm, and the way they say they apply it, in order to question the way these two aspects of appropriation are combined.
[9]
A symptom of the recent environmental labelling of certain practices by public actors, the 1998 section of the INSEE “Ongoing study on living conditions” – the predecessor of the EPEM – did not collect information on the number of appliances or the frequency of air travel, even though there were already questions on organic food, recycling, and car use.
[10]
The most well-known campaign was called “Energy saving, quick it’s getting hot!” was conducted between 2004 and 2013 by the Ministry of the Environment and ADEME.
[11]
For more detailed results of the regression models, see table A2 in the appendix.
[12]
Constructed using the standardised arithmetic average of the corresponding standardised index of practices.
[13]
It is expected that these variables affect both attitudes (Franzen et Meyer, 2009) and certain practices (Carfagna et al., 2014; Mathé et al., 2012; Stanes et al., 2015).).
[14]
Even though on average an increase in one point on the index of support for individual action is associated, all other things considered equal, with an increase of 0.15 points in the general index of practices, the coefficients associated with the indexes reflecting a concern about environment as being in a poor condition (0.05) and the negative effects of modernity (0.07) are significantly lower.
[15]
In order to ensure robust confidence intervals in spite of the non-probabilistic nature of the sample, we have also estimated bootstrap confidence intervals based on 5000 simulations. The results are robust using this alternative method of inference.
[16]
We apply the “Kaiser" criteria, and limit the space to the dimensions of which the value is greater than 1. Moreover, our two groups of variables strongly contribute to the two first axes while the third is primarily (67%) structured by attitudes (see Table A3 in the appendix).
[17]
The use of “goodwill” directly refers to “cultural goodwill” (Bourdieu, 1984), i.e. how upper middle class members persistently attempt to conform to high aesthetic standards to obtain status rewards.
[18]
As we can see in Figure 3, the distribution of modalities for the socio-demographic variable is weaker on Axis 1 than Axis 2. This shows the need to include a greater number of variables (relating to cultural practices, for example) in future studies, in order to better understand the social objects behind the cleavage regarding gesture-based environmentalism. Nevertheless, the multifactor ANOVA analysis presented in table A5 (appendix) reveals the strong significance of the connection between position on Axis 1 and gender, education, or age.
[19]
These practices may be associated with others such as walking, or jogging (Bourdieu, [1979] 2016).
[20]
Experienced by women through differential socialisation, and by older women particularly, the need to take care of one’s body goes some way to explaining the particularly high use of healthy foods (Régnier et al., 2009) and thus lower consumption of meat and higher consumption of organic products.
[21]
Here we adapt the hypothesis mentioned by Pierre Bourdieu that in large towns there is a “"cultural atmosphere", in other words […] the incitements provided by a peer group defined its place of residence” ([1979] 1984, 564). In the case of eco-citizenship, these location effects may take place through comparison and discussion between neighbours (Macias and Williams, 2016), but also through the presence of infrastructure and green spaces that contribute to generate a certain attitude towards the environment and the norm of individual responsibility for its protection.
[22]
The typology proposed here is based on the five first dimensions (51.6%) and allows us to extend the analysis to practices – such as the use of air transport – which are not often associated with the two logics analysed above.
[23]
For more details see figure A6 (appendix).
[24]
On the benefit of combining factorial analysis and clustering, see Ludovic Lebart et al. (1995, 185-221).

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Revue française de sociologie 2020/1 Vol. 61

Journal article

Eco-citizenship: From norm to practice

Social position, material constraints, and diverse relations toward eco-citizenship

Cite this article

Notes

BOX 1. – The study on “Household Environmental Practices” 2016

BOX 2. – Indexes of eco-citizenship attitudes and practices

Diffusion and reception of the norm, material configurations and dispositions

The heterogeneity of the eco-citizenship norm and the focus of public institutions

FIGURE 1. – The link between environmental attitudes and two measures of environmental practices

FIGURE 1. – The link between environmental attitudes and two measures of environmental practices

Gesture-based environmentalism and frugality-based environmentalism

Dual positionings in relation to the eco-citizenship norm

FIGURE 2. – Correlation Circle – Axes 1 and 2

FIGURE 2. – Correlation Circle – Axes 1 and 2

Box 3. – Multiple Factor Analysis – Methodology

Relations to the eco-citizenship norm and position in the social space

FIGURE 3. – Representation of supplementary variables 1 – Axes 1 and 2

FIGURE 3. – Representation of supplementary variables 1 – Axes 1 and 2

Relation to the eco-citizenship norm and position in the residential space

FIGURE 4. – Representation of supplementary variable 2 – Axes 1 and 2

FIGURE 4. – Representation of supplementary variable 2 – Axes 1 and 2

Configurations of attitudes and practices and ecological habitus

Six configurations of eco-citizenship attitudes and practices

Category 1: Disinterested urbanites

TABLE 1. – Six types of relations to the environment

TABLE 1. – Six types of relations to the environment

Category 2: Traditionally frugal individuals

Category 3: Comfortable consumers

Category 4: Modest and responsible renters

Category 5: Well-intentioned homeowners

Category 6: Ethically committed urbanites

Two forms of ecological habitus?

Appendix

TABLE 1. – Linear regressions for the general index of environnental practices

TABLE 1. – Linear regressions for the general index of environnental practices

TABLE A2. – Inertia explained by the MFA factors

TABLE A2. – Inertia explained by the MFA factors

TABLE A3. – Multivariate ANOVA on coordinates of individuals on Axis 1

TABLE A3. – Multivariate ANOVA on coordinates of individuals on Axis 1

TABLE A4. – Multivariate ANOVA on the coordinates of individuals on Axis 2

TABLE A4. – Multivariate ANOVA on the coordinates of individuals on Axis 2

FIGURE A5. – Projection of the 4 057 individuals – Axes 1 and 2

FIGURE A5. – Projection of the 4 057 individuals – Axes 1 and 2

FIGURE A6. – HAC – Increase in inertia following the addition of an additional category

FIGURE A6. – HAC – Increase in inertia following the addition of an additional category

FIGURE A7. – Representation of clusters from the HAC on the first factorial plane of the MFA

FIGURE A7. – Representation of clusters from the HAC on the first factorial plane of the MFA

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