With the climate crisis, there is a necessity for people to live more sustainably. One way to do this is to change our lifestyle and the choices we make in our homes. The aim of this master thesis is to investigate the gender aspect of the “sustainable lifestyle” by looking at families with an ambition to live more environmentally conscious. If the environmentally friendly lifestyle for people in general is basically about taking advantage of what we have, making better decisions about food and other things that are linked to housework, something that women to a large extent take greater responsibility for, how can we look at environmentally friendly living from a gender perspective? I have collected my data through qualitative, semi-structured interviews with six heterosexual women in Swedish families. The study shows that the female informants take a greater responsibility than their male partners for the family to live environmentally friendly. This research also shows that the sustainable lifestyle is time consuming and that this mostly affects women due to their greater responsibility for housework. This has implications for the gender equality of the household. All the interviewed women thought gender equality was important, but the study show that they sometimes must choose between being equal with their partners and being sustainable.

Although consumers’ need for a healthy and sustainable lifestyle drives natural cosmetics consumption, various claims of natural cosmetics make consumers confused and distrustful. This study aimed to explore factors that affect consumers' purchasing behavior of natural cosmetics under the theoretical framework of planned behavior (TPB). The study adopted the qualitative method of purposive sampling. Semi-structured interview technique and thematic analysis were used to collect and analyze data from 21 consumers of natural or traditional cosmetics living in Uppsala. The results showed: consumers had uncertain attitudes towards buying natural cosmetics, which had no obvious impact on the purchasing behavior; the perceived social pressures from family, relatives, groups, etc. had a clear positive impact on the purchasing behavior; online purchasing, recommendation from others, and sustainable lifestyle facilitated the purchasing behavior; high price, inconvenient purchasing location, lack of knowledge, non-harmonized certifications, etc. led to the inconsistency between consumers' purchasing intention and actual purchasing behavior. Product knowledge was explored as an important resource that consumers need. The above findings can be used to improve marketing strategies like harmonized certifications. This study also paves the way for future quantitative verification of these factors.

This master thesis analyzes the influence of psychological barriers of consumers from Germany, Sweden, and Iran for using sustainable transportation modes. Climate change has started to change the way people travel. Yet prior research has shown that consumers from all over the world lack consistency between their behavioral intention and their actual behavior. In the case of traveling, this means that a significant number of consumers intends to use sustainable transportation modes, but fails to use them in the end. The reasons for this so-called intention-behavior gap in consumers' minds have been researched successfully and frequently in the past two decades. The novelty of this present thesis is the international comparison of travelers from three different countries and the explicit focus on voluntary travel. The according research questions are: RQ 1:  To what extent is there a gap between the intention and behavior of leisure travelers          regarding choosing sustainable transportation vehicles? RQ 2:  Which group of consumers (inclined abstainers or disinclined actors[1]) plays the bigger      role in creating this gap? RQ 3:  What are the determinants and barriers of using more sustainable transportation     vehicles in leisure transportation? RQ 4:  How is the sustainable behavior of leisure travelers in Sweden, Germany, and Iran            different? To answer the research questions, an online survey in Swedish (n1 = 130), German (n2 = 128), and Persian (n3 = 127) language was carried out ( ∑ n = 385) in April 2020 with a convenience sampling method and analyzed in May 2020. The results show that there is a slightly positive intention-behavior gap in the Swedish sample and a slightly negative intention-behavior gap in the Iranian sample. In the German sample, no significant intention-behavior gap has been found. Moreover, a higher level of environmental attitude, a higher level of environmental knowledge, a higher level of perceived effectiveness (of the consumers' own actions), and a higher level of social norms increases the intention of leisure travelers in Sweden, Germany, and Iran to use sustainable vehicles for leisure traveling - both for short and for long trips. The impact of perceived value and perceived price of sustainable transportation modes, as well as the impact of consumers' sustainable lifestyle on the on the travel intention are not supported in all three countries. Additionally, distance between origin and destination has been found to moderate the impact of determinants on intention. The moderating role of distance also varies in different countries. [1] See the literature review chapter for an explanation

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