The world faces human-made hazardous weather events such as heat waves, droughts, floods andwildfires in dimensions which have never been seen before. A crucial contributor to this negative trendis the constantly growing transportation sector. In addition, most urban regions suffer from trafficcongestions which lead among others to local emissions, the loss of time and noise pollution. Onepromising approach to reduce the amount of transport related emissions is ride-sharing. This paperfocuses on the possibilities and barriers of ride-sharing for the daily commute to and from work. To gainreliably results, a real-life test trial was implemented at a Swedish corporation. The gatheredquantitative and qualitative datasets were analysed with the framework of Social Practice Theory, whichsplits up the practice into its three elements of materials, meanings and competences and therebydevelops revealing insights. The reason for the low participation rate during the test trial can be tracedback to the potential loss of flexibility. Despite a high environmental awareness and a deep trust relationto colleagues, the potential loss of flexibility was for most participants the crucial factor to not start ridesharing.Even though individuals’ opinions were very positive towards the idea of ride-sharing, theparticipation rate during the real-life study shows that the perception of ride-sharing highly derivatesfrom the action.

Philosophiae Doctor - PhD / Studies on rational medicine use (RMU) have mainly focused on identifying, quantifying, and addressing irrational use without exploring reasons behind this irrational use. In addition, minimal work has been conducted on irrational use of medicines in the context of the growing burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). This PhD research examined medicine use in Eswatini, (previously Swaziland) between April 2017 and March 2019, with a focus on prescribing practices linked to specific diagnoses. It further explored factors influencing RMU, which included testing the effects of a short intervention - prescription audit and feedback coupled with small group education - on prescribing practices in health facilities.

Sustainable urban development is emerging out as tool to tackle climate change with a big difference mark. With cities acting as emitters of huge chunks of GHG gases, voices from all corners are intensifying pressure to mend the current urban development model and help find a solution. Several UN conferences fuelled the debate to include local people living in cities and held them accountable for their living behaviour towards the natural environment, and help change the existing unsustainable living patterns or practices which already exist in society. Since, it is the humans for whom these technological solutions have been provided, therefore, it becomes important how the humans themselves thinks while adapting or rejecting any sustainable solutions in their daily lives. The role of spatial planning becomes important here, because it involves all round planning which influences their daily living behaviour, considering individual as the ‘bearer’ of its ‘final outcome’. This thesis will help explore human dimensions in the sustainability debate, thoroughly arguing the factors humans consider in their daily lives, while making a new choice between sustainable and unsustainable practices which is introduced by the spatial planning around them. The study also helps to understand that regardless of individual negotiations, how residents motivated to adapt sustainable measures in their lives. This is being done by undertaking two theoretical viewpoints, the social-practice theory and the structure-agency theory.  Social-practice theory helped understand how daily living practices of the residents in Hammarby Sjöstad are related with spatial planning. This relationship between practices and spatial planning involves several rounds of negotiations between individuals and their existing daily routines, before a final choice is made. This second concept is understood through structure-agency theory. The case under study for this thesis is Hammarby Sjöstad, a district located in the south of Stockholm city in Sweden, which is being projected as a model for sustainable urban development. The data for the study was collected through qualitative research method, conducting interviews of the residents in Hammarby Sjöstad. The interviews conducted for the study found out that public transport, waste recycling and open spaces emerged as one of the most effective and efficient spatial planning in Hammarby Sjöstad, according to the respondents. The study also highlights individual cases where respondents have given specific reasons for making particular decisions, highlighting the individual negotiations.

The purpose of this thesis is to deepen our understanding of sustainable  consumption behavior and provide valuable insights that can inform efforts to  promote sustainability at both individual and societal levels. Through focus group interviews and a comparative analysis of diverse socio-cultural contexts,  this study aims to contribute to ongoing discussions and initiatives aimed at   achieving a more sustainable world.

The globalized food system poses many systemic challenges that have significant impacts on the environment and human health. In order to tackle these challenges, especially those relating to climate change, it is assumed that consumers need to be accountable for the role they play in these issues, requiring them to alter their harmful consumption habits. In terms of the food system, this means that people need to evolve into ethical consumers and become more invested in what and how much they eat, where it comes from, etc . However, throughout the literature and in policies, there remains a focus on altering what people buy, rather than reducing waste from their overconsumption. Reducing waste and consumption would have a more beneficial impact for the environment, human health, and urban sustainability, yet it remains secondary to the narrative of buying sustainable alternatives. A waste reduction narrative would encourage sustainable behaviours that would also be more accessible to households of various socioeconomic backgrounds, and would provide more tangible results in terms of money saved, reduced greenhouse gases and waste output, and increased sustainability. However, food consumption is the result of many ingrained daily food practices influenced by a multitude of factors that prevent people from consciously considering the consequences of their actions. Food consumption and waste management as a phenomenon can therefore be interpreted using Social Practice Theory (SPT), which states that all humans act autonomously and according to social norms. This means that practices are recursive and routinized, subject to change, yet somewhat unconscious. All practices lead to consumption in some way, and changing such deeply embedded routines to become more sustainable requires a full understanding of these deeply entrenched practices. Practices can be broken down into three main components that drive how practices are formed and maintained:materials, competences, and meanings. This project uses mini-ethnographic studies to highlight SPT in order to understand the factors (contextual, materials, competences, and meanings) influencing households in Edmonton, Canada as they navigate the current sustainability narrative, and how they approach sustainable food consumption and food waste management. The results from this study lend some insight into what materials, competences, meanings, and other factors drive people already somewhat aware of sustainable food consumption issues to practice such types of behaviour. These influential elements have been found in many other recently published works, and give further insight into how broad external factors and specific internal factors can drive consumption practices. Prevention and reduction behaviours were already somewhat prevalent in this group. It is important that education programs targeting sustainable food consumption behaviours understand what drives certain food related practices, and how they can target the barriers that prevent certain groups of people from adopting more sustainable habits.

This critical ethnographic collective case study examined the process of becoming a teacher in the context of visual art education. This longitudinal study was grounded in larger educational concerns regarding the preparation of teachers for socially and culturally diverse U.S. public schools. This framing of teacher learning went beyond traditional dichotomies in educational research that maintain an artificial boundary between learning to teach content and learning to teach all students effectively and equitably. In order to re-integrate the study of teacher learning, this research foregrounds the transactional relationship between a preservice art teacher’s social locations (e.g., race, class, sex-gender, language) and how s/he makes sense of what it means to be an “art teacher.” Specifically, the study asked (a) how preservice art teachers negotiated their emerging art teacher identities in a university-based teacher education program, (b) how their social positions were implicated in that process, and (c) how their teacher identities were meditated by cultural narratives, artifacts, and practices. This approach eschewed simplistic and reductive analyses of teacher identities in order to attain a nuanced understanding of the multiple, sometimes contradictory social processes involved in becoming a teacher. This collective case study centered six preservice art teachers with varied racial, class, gender, and sexual identities, all of whom attended the same undergraduate teacher education program in the southwestern U.S. Social practice theory of identity, and critical curriculum and cultural theory were employed in constructing a multi-leveled relational analysis of the commonalities and divergences in participants’ self-understandings over time. Findings showed historical patterns of institutionalized racism, as well as complex class and sex-gendered meanings of art. These inequitable norms were reproduced in ways distinctive to the asocial and apolitical “common sense” knowledge that was mobilized within the world of art teacher education. Some participants experienced alienation and marginalization based on their social positioning in relation to the world of art education. The findings also illuminated the polyvalent nature of identity through the coexistence of hegemonic identities as well as counter-hegemonic agency. Implications and possibilities for generating more critical, equity-oriented teacher education and art education research, practice, and policy are considered. / text

Food waste is a major environmental issue. It takes electricity, water, and energy to produce food, to store it, to refrigerate it, to transport it and to prepare it. If for some reason the food is then not consumed, it goes to landfill, where it produces greenhouse gases. The fact that food waste is a significant contributor to the tourism industry’s negative impact on the environment has not received as much attention from tourism academics as one could expect, given the magnitude of the problem in tourism, neither has it been given much attention on how to handle it. This study therefore looks into ways to alter consumer food waste as well as identifying the opportunities of food service strategies that allow reducing food waste, while at the same time maintaining the quality of the service at a hotel in Kalmar. The research used social practice theory (SPT) and the concept of service quality as a theoretical framework to guide the collection as well as the analysis. The empirical work of this study consists of two phases, where firstly an exploratory phase was conducted to measure food waste from the breakfast buffet and to conduct a customer survey to point out possible initiatives to reduce food waste. The responses and results were then further analyzed to find patterns and themes which formed the explanatory phase, focusing on assessing the interest of hotel management to adopt solutions reducing food wasted from the breakfast service. The results and analysis proved that most participants, whether consumers or providers, already have a general idea of what sustainable food consumption means as well as engaging in sustainable practices and behaviors. The analysis of the results through the framework of SPT revealed that the factors that motivate participants to engage in sustainable behaviors resonate more to sustainable consumption rather than reducing the consumption, which can be a reason for the vast amount of food waste. However, the results revealed that though there is a growing movement towards reducing food waste as well as straightforward strategies that can be implemented to reduce food waste, there is still a need to try and change the fundamental behaviors to become more sustainable in that matter.

Cities all over the world have increasingly covered the topics about sustainable development. In the recent years, the garment industry has presented responsibilities and engagements towards sustainable development. Environmental awareness has increased in most societies. There is no doubt that consumers are demanding for more sustainable measures and this increases pressure on apparel enterprises to take actions and implement policies in order to secure their business. In terms of the garment industry, there is a rise of sustainably consciousness in the past decades.This leads to the purpose of this research project, which is to identify the key factors that affect consumer attitudes and behaviour regarding sustainability issues in textile industry, with a consumer study in Hong Kong. Key objectives in this research relate to consumer awareness of sustainable development aspects in garment purchasing decisions. This is a qualitative consumer study with an exploratory approach. Hong Kong citizens who were born in the 1990s were selected to join the two focus groups. This is because this generation is consumption-oriented, and also more conscious to sustainable development. It can be concluded that numerous factors and considerations that play an essential role in consumers’ purchasing decision in garment industry. Moreover, consumers perceive that several parties are responsible for being sustainable as this has been important in this industry.

Today, there has been growing concern on how to live a life more sustainable in terms of people’s needs and consumptions, globally with no exception in Sweden. It is due to the challenges that society faces to ensure the existence of resources availability for current as well as future generation. At the same time, we are looking at an era where the advancement of technology could incentivize people to shift their consumption pattern from acquiring new products to used goods from other peers. This technology provides the possibility for peer communication and matchmaking to exchange goods from local communities to different regions within the country. This practice is widely known as the sharing economy, although many other similar terms are used by academic scholars as well as business practitioners. As of today, several studies have attempted to understand people’s motives for participating in the sharing economy practice. Nevertheless, some other aspects have not been thoroughly researched, such as the social interaction within the practice. Social interaction is perceived as one of the essential features that the sharing economy heavily relies on among the two practitioners. Hence, the main aim of this study is to understand the role of social interaction between peers while outlining the dimensions within an interaction that affects participation. Therefore, a qualitative study was adopted for this thesis by interviewing eight Swedes while observing the second-hand platforms they were exercising. In this study, we adopted the Social Practice Theory as our theoretical framework to comprehend the meaning behind the practitioners’ involvement, the competence they display, and the materials they curate within the practice. The findings of this study illustrated that social interaction was not only an essential part in the second-hand practice, but also inevitable to avoid completely. Furthermore, our empirical findings illustrated social interaction as a gateway to receive financial benefits while simultaneously offering the practitioners the possibility of manifesting their virtues through the practice. Moreover, we also discovered that social interaction was a crucial element for promoting but also preserving practice. The aspect of social interaction makes the involved practitioners need to manage the adequate know-how/understanding and competencies to get benefits from the practice, such as negotiation capability, dispute handling, risk evaluation, and managing overly apprehension. In addition, we found it beneficial to distinguish the buying practice and the selling practice as two different practices instead of a single practice.

Fast fashion is an industry that is closely linked to the cause of climate change, and it is the second largest industry to contribute to pollution. In Sweden, one of the largest groups to consume fast fashion is young consumers, i.e., Generation Z. The same generation is also the information generation, meaning that they are the ones to solve the climate crisis. Social practice theory (SPT) is used to understand the reason behind different practices in society. But is lacking in research on fast fashion. This study, therefore, aims to understand the reasons, values, and practices through the lenses of SPT for why young consumers (Generation Z) in Sweden consume fast fashion despite knowing its effects on the environment. To understand the phenomenon, data has been collected on young consumers in Sweden (age 17-21) in two different cities. The analysis and data show that price is a big factor, the availability of secondhand stores also affects the possibility to choose another option. Climate change is something that was less important for most of the respondents and can be understood as a dying trend. It can be understood that Generation Z is not a homogenous group in Sweden. The findings also suggest that the SPT model should ideally be implemented with a study on external factors to describe possible reasons for understanding a practice as well to enable other practices which can be more sustainable